Latest / Reframe First / Francesco Piccolo, Founder & CFO at TripGuru | Scaling Sustainable Tours in Southeast Asia
Transcript
- Oleksij Rak: And hey guys, welcome to another episode of Reframe First. Oleg, I'm host of this podcast. Let me welcome our today's guest Francesco Piccolo, founder and CFO at TripGuru. Hi Francesco, it's great having you here. Francesco: Hello, nice to be here. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, TripGuru is one of the leading tour operators in Southeast Asia that provides experience-based packages for environmentally conscious travelers, right? So, and you provide packages around Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Turkey, Japan, and other countries. So, could you tell us more about what you're building at TripGuru and what the mission of the company is and like what it is all about? Francesco: Sure. So TripGurri is an on-campus company. I come from Italy, but I moved here about 12 years ago. do we do? To make it simple, without fancy words, we sell day tours, sites in tours, activity-based tours in different countries. You mentioned Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam. ⁓ Oleksij Rak: you you Francesco: Japan, Turkey are the countries where we operate as of today. Basically, we created and we keep expanding a network of tour guides, drivers, activity providers. We craft itineraries for them and with them, we brand these products. We our quality standards and operational standards, and we distribute these products through our network of channels, which are B2B and B2C. Oleksij Rak: So. you Francesco: We have a couple of hundreds of customers a year, 25,000 tours more or less a year, about 2,000 people between tour guides and drivers and activity providers. Oleksij Rak: you So. Francesco: For the travel industry, tour and activities sector, which is very fragmented, it's quite of a big scale already, requires a lot of technology and operational efficiency, which we will speak maybe later a bit. So what do we do? All this is under one brand, the Trip Guru brand. We have 4.7, 4.8 as a review rating average on five stars. We aim and are proud to say we are very close to zero impact in our tools. So this is a summary. If I have to tell you about our mission, well, we don't really have a mission statement, but I think I can break down in three. Oleksij Rak: you Francesco: areas probably. For our we want to provide quality and fairly priced experiences. So we want to be the right trade-off between quality and price and making sure there is that transparency when they buy. For our operators, suppliers, tour guides, we want to provide stable jobs. That's our objective. Oleksij Rak: Mm-hmm. Francesco: For the industry itself, want, and this is probably the most important, at least for myself, we want to make sustainable tourism the norm, not the exception. And yeah, that's it about TripGuru. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, awesome. But like they saying like, like, that's quite a big operation, 2000 people of providers and 20, 25,000 tours, like that's a lot. And so like, the idea is like, are you selling like some package deals? ⁓ Or is it like, are you selling some individual tours? mean, package deals like person arrives to the country, like you accommodate them, you like travel them, like the itineraries. Francesco: No, we only sell the activity itself, the tour, so we don't do the full package. We are the third step of the booking process the organization of a trip. So first, you book your flight, then you book your hotel, then usually just a few days before traveling or when you are already in the destination, you book the things to do. We cover the part of the things to do. Oleksij Rak: Thank you. Thanks, Edim. Awesome. And you're also building the itineraries. Francesco: Yep. So, yes. Oleksij Rak: Did you like how entertaining? Francesco: Yeah, so 25,000 are the number of tours that we run across a year, more or less. Those tours, those itineraries are about 1,000, a bit less than 1,000, included different packages per We try to cover all service levels as well, starting from the cheapest option where you might have only a driver. going to the most premium option where you go private with the luxury services. ⁓ cover from ⁓ private tour to ⁓ bus tour. And in between, we have actually our strongest part, which is the small group tours. So it's a group of seven to 12 people, depending on the country. ⁓ So try to cover a wide range of itineraries and the levels per itinerary. ⁓ Oleksij Rak: Thanks. Francesco: Do we craft these itineraries? We do everything in-house. So we have a team that the market, talks to the customers, collect feedback from supply side, from demand side as well through. through interviews with our sales distribution channels, et cetera. And we come up with new ideas for new itineraries. And it's a continuous process. Our itineraries, some of them are more static, the one that sells best. But there is always some sort of moving part and optimization according to feedback and according also to market trends. Because it's an industry keeps changing. And so you need to keep always ahead of the curve. Oleksij Rak: Does it also account for like the different seasonality? Because like one of the biggest challenges in travel is seasonality. from I'm hearing recently, the seasonality itself changes. like some people are used to travel in the summer but season changed to being like spring and autumn for example like in European countries like ⁓ travelers are still coming in the summer but you know the seasonality changed. ⁓ does it work in like, would say part of the world ⁓ and it also like trends there? ⁓ Francesco: So has been always huge as part of this industry Changes have been changing across the year, but still there is a lot of volatility between seasonalities. So still what we see is that peak season is double the traffic and double the people and double the tours that you need to run compared with the low season. So of course, this creates a lot of complication for any operators because you might run over stuff in low season, you might run under stuff in high season. You might have too much supply in low season, and so you need to keep everyone happy and try to give jobs to everyone, but then you will not have enough high season. So this is a constant work where we need to kind of battle and see how ⁓ to the risks. has been shifting, yes, and ⁓ mean, in an ideal world, we would like always to mitigate. And the way we do that is we go in destinations. we try to expand in destinations that have alternate seasonalities. So for example, if our high season in Thailand is Christmas, are going to Japan where high season is actually in spring. And so in this way, we try to keep more the same level of volumes that of course shift between these ⁓ different I haven't much of the shift that has been described ⁓ sometimes. Yes, try to promote less traveled destinations. I think it's a good thing to over tourism. But to be honest with you, I haven't seen that still very much happening in the numbers. I think of the travelers still want to see the main attractions. So if you go to Paris, you want to see the Tour de Paris. If you go to Rome, you want to see the Colosseum. It's difficult that people will not go there. and the period when they travel also, yes, can try to promote the different seasons and we try to do that, but the reality is if you have a family and you have kids, you can travel only one month a year because it's when the kids are holiday. If you certain jobs, you also can travel only on a certain moment of the year. My view on is that you can smooth a little bit the peaks and the lows of the curves. Oleksij Rak: you you Francesco: but you cannot really change this volatility in terms of seasonality. Oleksij Rak: Okay, I see. about what you mentioned, like you're also trying to sell it like B2C, like from your website, but you're also trying to do the B2B sales. like, what is about? So do you have some integration with, with, I don't know, accommodations platforms? Who do you with? Francesco: So we have integrations with all the main online travel agencies for tourism activities, by Aetor, TripAdvisor, Get Your Guide, Cluq. There are many, mentioning a few of the biggest ones. So what we do is we ⁓ sell that. ⁓ Can you repeat the question? Yeah. Oleksij Rak: And what probably, maybe like put it different, like what do you make customer acquisition channels? Like, where do you get the visitors? Francesco: Yes. So most of our distribution happened B2B. We have been through everything over the year. We have been retrying everything and we found B2B being our sweet spot where we sell to online travel agencies. We have also a website that... participate for a decent percentage of our bookings, but not for the majority. We have been going through the classic channels of customer acquisition, paid channels from social media to Google, SEO, then other organic channels as well, classic digital marketing activities. But for us, it tough. and we have found, as I said, our sweet spot more on the B2B side. So that's where we focus most. We focus on selling through online travel agencies. are integrated ⁓ most of them. ⁓ all the one where we sell decent volumes and it's worth to do an integration. are API integrated and that helps a lot in terms of operational capabilities, of course. Oleksij Rak: Yes, that's a safe bet, especially with Google fighting with AI recently and changing all the traffic behaviors. Quite lot of platforms went down because of that. having B2B sales is really a safe bet. It's a steady channel of traffic and of customers. Francesco: Yeah. Yeah, Google is a channel that we will need to see what happens, right, with AI. now, SIMS is a channel that the and the traffic is going down in terms of Google search. AI and chat bots search through chat bots are going up. We need to see how the landscape will evolve, if Google will be able to dominate. We are going to see advertising very soon on chat GPTM platform like that as well. So of course the landscape is shifting a lot. see it as a bigger opportunity for operators to go direct again, try again, ⁓ the Google typical battle has kind of been lost by most of us, unfortunately, because we need to compete with big online travel agencies. have larger budget, they have more tech, they have more marketing capabilities. And of course, it's difficult to compete. And you end up also fighting against your own listings on these platforms. Now, AI is creating something new. am positive, but for the operators, I'm positive. But I have to say, we need to see how things are going to evolve because ⁓ Historically, it's also true that the big players, the big distributors, the big tech companies have been able to take over the digital channels. And this might be another digital channel where they will take over. ⁓ But my hope is, and for sure, at least for a period of a couple of years, there is opportunity for ⁓ two operators to. Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Francesco: be basically found on the LLMs directly if you start doing activity there. So it's something we are looking at it's something where I am putting a little bit at least. Oleksij Rak: Awesome. Yeah, I was about to ask if you see like LLM SSR, because they can like build all these ⁓ itineraries for the end user, but basically you are selling these itineraries. ⁓ Francesco: Yeah. Yeah, mean, building the itineraries is another good point. If we talk about the AI, there are so many applications and I can speak so much about the applications we have, operational, et cetera. Building itineraries is an idea. It's not something we are actually doing at the moment. And are not really looking to that because it's not that much of a workload for us to create the new itineraries itself. For me, it's more about being found during the search. So if you want to pay, fine, you go to the typical paying channel. But if you want to go organic, either you go online travel agency, which could be a kind of an organic channel in the sense you pay only if you receive a book and you pay a commission. Otherwise, you don't have to pay that from Google. Or you could go through typical SEO, which is something that is changing very fast. And so now the new. Oleksij Rak: Yeah. you Francesco: The new point is being into AIO, so optimization for and AI. So people who can get there and companies who can find the sweet spot and being able to be found at least for a period of time, as I said, will definitely benefit. So something that everyone should look into and try. Oleksij Rak: Awesome. With regards to like the market, so we touched the like AI, but what biggest changes did you experience in like last year or two years, maybe post-COVID, like what are the biggest shifts in the industry that you think? Francesco: Good question. I shifts that I've seen ⁓ are, after COVID, there has been a surge in bookings. Many people wanted to travel, the famous Revenge Travel, et cetera. Then there has been some crisis, and it's always like this. There are waves in the So at the moment, I see more commoditization. ⁓ travel products, especially tours are becoming more commodities. I'm seeing the online travel agencies opening, trying to increase their top line by acquiring more supply and filtering less the supply. These bring this effect of ⁓ Oleksij Rak: . Francesco: products becoming more common by commodities. So it's not very bright, if I have to be honest, because I see more pushing toward the price competition. less attention to quality and in customers as well. While after COVID we have seen a surge in people wanting to travel well, book private tours, trying to have top experiences. Now I see more people wanting again and even more than before COVID. Oleksij Rak: you Francesco: for honestly the cheapest option in the market and the most basic service. We many cases where people just want to be brought the attraction. have time to take some pictures and just move to the next place. They don't really want to have a tour guide. They don't really care about having such a crafted experience anymore. I'm talking about day trips, which is our core. If you're going to multi-day, probably it's a different story. I'm talking about day trips. I think it's a moment. It's just a moment where perhaps- the global economy is not going that well, so people might want to spend less, which is understandable, and focusing on getting the best that they can in the shortest time and with the economic value. So for operators like us that have been investing, is investing in quality, in sustainability. in building scale, which requires a lot of investment in tech, is tough because we have a lot of competition coming from operators who now come in and just undercut prices without the quality part. So that ⁓ is not. not good in terms of how the industry, my opinion, is moving. However, I trust our waves again. Things will change. And there will be, again, a focus on quality and possibly sustainability as well going forward, maybe in one or two years from now. That's what I foresee. Oleksij Rak: you Okay, that's an interesting observation. And what is your demographics? Where do the people come from? What's the age? Because other operators, I'm hearing quite opposite that people are willing to pay for personalization for individual approaches. Or maybe it's graphics. ⁓ Francesco: Yeah. Yeah, I think it's also maybe the part of the world where we operate. I have heard that as well, but I can't say is what I see on a daily basis. So yeah, I stand on my point. And our demographic is, in terms of age, is very wide, to be honest with you. We have young couples in their late 20s, up to Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Francesco: senior people in their 60s and all in between families and couples in between. In terms of countries, even though we are a company that is based in Hong Kong, in Asia, and we operate in Asia, our customer base is mostly European. Then probably 50 percent is European, then we have a big portion of US based and Australia based as well and maybe up. 30 % coming from different countries in Asia. Our tours, as I told you, ⁓ try to offer all the ⁓ levels. We go from the most luxury to the cheapest option. So of course, we can gather different types of demographic in terms of intentional spending, which good for us. And we try to acquire as much demand as we can. But I have to tell you, I have seen this trend ⁓ on across all the board, to be honest with you. We have had in the last two years a lot of competition coming, for example, from large groups tours that basically what they do, they provide you the most basic service you can have at the cheapest price you can have. So of course, it's good because you pay less, ⁓ still go to the same places and they are booming. They booming. They are selling a lot ⁓ though Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Francesco: Not always. I don't want to speak bad about anyone. Some of these companies are really good in terms of quality. But unfortunately, there is also competition that to undercut prices go into practices that are not very ethical, not very ethical in terms of sustainability, not very ethical also in terms of competition because they give you the most cheaper price. They undercut also the payment to the tour guide. The guide is paid less, but what the tour guide can do during the tour, can upsell you different services. Can upsell you from the restaurant, can upsell you. an elephant riding, is something super bad, by the way. talking about Thailand, for example, or Indonesia, et cetera, can upsell you another ticket to another attraction where you can stop, can send you to souvenir shops and get the commission. So all these type of practices, the customer doesn't know anything of what is happening behind the scenes. The customer see a cheap price, doesn't even understand what's happening. So maybe they also give a good review to the tour guide itself. But the reality is that it's creating ⁓ Oleksij Rak: Yes. Francesco: the winner is the one who is trying to just get smarter and not doing the right thing ⁓ and to operate in a way that is more sustainable financially and environmentally as well for the destination. So that's unfortunately a reality that has always been there. in my opinion, is almost coming back stronger than before in the last two years. And it's something I'm battling every day and my teams are battling every day to try to overcome. Oleksij Rak: And what you're doing there? Like, are you battling? ⁓ Francesco: Yeah, but paying. We need to undercut prices as well, we don't undercut the supply. So our margins go thinner. We try to sustain ourselves with volumes and trying to launch new products, try to invent new things, try to optimize. The biggest one is probably trying to optimize the top line and bottom line. Now we are looking into more technology to try to optimize these two parts. We are looking into dynamic pricing, variable pricing, so try to optimize the price according to everything. Seasonality, when people book, when the tour is, how many tour guides we have, how big is the car, what type of customer we have, etc. On the supply side as well, try to... Yeah, to basically optimize that side as well. So it's tough, but... But this is what we need to do. The other big part is operationally. We are doing a lot of investment in technology. AI is very helpful to automate as much as we can. So try to reduce the OPEX automating all the processes. And the more scale you have, the more automation, of course, you need. And ⁓ is very strategic for us in order to keep. So if we don't have much cross margin, we can keep still the. the net profitability by reducing our OPEC sector and optimizing that part. So it's a tough moment to be honest, but it's also exciting, especially with this advancement in technology. And I'm sure that in the next couple of years, we will benefit a lot from all the investments that we are doing in tech. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, that's really interesting. Like automation is something I'm quite familiar with. so, like, this is one of the ways to increase margins because you can't expand. Francesco: No. Yeah. Yeah. Oleksij Rak: like what are you automating? It's like some booking processes or like itineraries building. What is that you're automating? Everything. Francesco: Everything. Everything. We automate really everything, starting from operations, so we automate the way we speak with customers, we automate the way we process bookings, the way we complaints or any conversation, the way we deliver information and... ⁓ way also our team get the information because when we have so many tools, so many suppliers, etc. Also our own team need to get information from a big knowledge basis that need to be automated in order to get the right information. ⁓ I go into finance, it's about automating the myriad of data points that you have, reconciliations, currencies, refunds. really, really everything. If I go into tech itself is automating certain parts of the coding and the process within their own team. Let me think if we go into supply, supply is probably the part that is less, no, is actually really automated supply as well because we have a tour guide app that provide all the information that the tour guides need, all the messaging that the tour guides need, all the... All the feedback as well that we need to provide, all the communication is inside the app, which is also partially AI driven as well. If we go into business development, something we are looking at is optimizing the pricing capacity and the ways we calculate these, again, large data set that need to be analyzed, need to be understood. which data to use, how to transport this into reporting, how to keep the reporting updated, how to transfer the reports and pass them through different teams. ⁓ all these can be done manually through Excel files and is a mess, of course, at scale can be automated through different tools that we are using. Oleksij Rak: Mm. Francesco: So we really try to automate everything. Oleksij Rak: Awesome. That sounds like a big challenge. Like how big of the team is working, if not a secret, on automating everything. Francesco: We are about 50 people, including customer service. We have six departments. We have operations that cover both supply, talking with our tour guide suppliers, talking with our customers as well, processing the orders. have the tech team. We have business development. We have the supply team. We have the finance team and HR team. So. Oleksij Rak: ⁓ there's a brush. Francesco: It's a small company still if you compare in many industry, maybe in the travel industry we are already a medium size or on the larger side. definitely the way to scale nowadays not adding more people, but is ⁓ optimizing the work of the people that we have. We have been this number actually for already a couple of years and we were more people before even with less bookings. ⁓ After we were about 100 and then managed to. to make grow the people inside and keep the one that were able to keep up with the change of the trends and slowly also change, of course, the stuff that was not up to the times anymore. It's that need to happen, Oleksij Rak: Yeah, yeah, it's the way to grow is like increase sales volumes and decrease amount of manual work that you do and the way to keep the margins. Francesco: Yeah. a low margin industry and has always been low margin. It's higher margin than flights hotels, but still is a low margin ⁓ industry. Operational excellence ⁓ is a and will be more more more important in the future. Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Yeah, Flights so low margins. We tried to sell flights and you earn half a year or one euro from ⁓ sales. yeah, in terms you mentioned competitors upselling different cheap stuff. And that's they created ⁓ that lower And why don't you? Francesco: Yeah. Oleksij Rak: you can go the way of like not selling the cheap stuff, but selling some added value on top of that. So packaging some deals for what I'm seeing like from the transfer, what we're working with our partners already. Like everybody is trying to package something because like they see like packages as the way to like increase the margin, like earn X on top of like what they already sold. It's like, it can be smart upsell, know, it should not be like cheap upsell. Francesco: Yeah. am totally favorable on upselling in an ethical way and that's part of the business and having add-ons is something very important and is also another value for the customer. You want to buy more, but that's another thing. It's not what I was talking before. What I was talking before is another type of behavior. Now, having add-ons, having upselling, try to increase your margin through adding some piece ⁓ the core service, that's totally good. It's something that still is not very digitalized. it needs to be... Our tech is not ready yet. We're working on that. But also many online travel agencies are not completely ready as well in their API connections. So add-ons don't work that well. It's quite complex to manage all that part still. But I'm sure something is coming up. We are on it and I know other players are working on it as well. Oleksij Rak: Mm-hmm. Francesco: So in the future, as soon as that is properly automated, it's definitely a way to go to increase profitability as well. It's yet not there, based on my experience, again, in day two or so, when you talk about big scale. The problem is always the same. If you talk about selling one tour a day or selling 10 tours a day, Oleksij Rak: . Francesco: nothing is a huge problem. There are a set of problems for sure, but the problem is when you start selling 100 tours a day 1,000 tours a day. Then ⁓ single change you make in the supply chain requires proper automation, proper processes, proper proper onboarding of the teams. And so that's the part that is difficult. Oleksij Rak: you Okay. Yeah, first of all, probably the proper automation, like proper data, like up to date and proper automation of these processes. Okay. Yeah, I see. What else are you working on? Like out of curiosity, like, well, like what are your bets about the future and what you're building right now? Besides like automating everything. Francesco: 100%. Well, that's the core thing. The other big part where we are working is sustainability. This is something we have tried to champion since several years. ⁓ also quite challenging in terms of adoption, in terms of changing the culture on both supply and demand. Also, that I to be a bit skeptical in the sense that we have seen many surveys over the years saying that the guests, customers want to travel more sustainable and it's wonderful. in the buying moment when they buy, then they buy still looking at the price mostly. Unfortunately, these two things don't really match. Unfortunately, to be sustainable, still you need to be a little bit more expensive because you have more expenses and there is no other way around yet. I believe in the long run, sustainability can actually be cheaper, but it's not yet. There are for many reasons, some of which I mentioned before. That is challenging. But it's nevertheless progressing and it's something we are continuously working on. We have been certified with GSTC years back. Then we decided to not go through that path but to just not spend the money in certification but spend the money in actually doing things, which believe is more important because certifications are not really. Oleksij Rak: So. Francesco: anyway, looked at by customers yet much. in terms of policies, we are offsetting, trying to reduce our emissions as much as we can. We offsetting what we cannot reduce. We have abolished single-use plastic. We are doing any type of policy about animal welfare, respect of the culture, animal interaction. Oleksij Rak: you Francesco: support of the local communities and so on and so forth. And that's the part that I like most actually. It's very fun. It's always challenging as I said, like everything, especially if you are at scale, but when you see adoption. And when you see people changing their behavior and their perspectives, it's very, very rewarding. And I do trust that in the long run, it will pay off. And even if it doesn't, it doesn't matter because I personally believe, and my co-founder as well, that it is the right thing to do. Every company should have that cost. That is the sustainability cost in their P &L, actually. And that should be, that's more a philosophical talk that we can have in another session, maybe. ⁓ Oleksij Rak: Yeah. I fully agree because we decided our company is socially responsible and we're just leaving part of our revenues for social responsibility part. I'm this trend of sustainability within travel more and more, but how do you make sustainability? Francesco: Yes. Oleksij Rak: not eating out all of your budgets, all of your margins, you know, as you mentioned, you're not using like cheap plastic or... All of that cost, it just adds up. Tiny bits, but it adds up on every step. Since it's like a thin margin business, it just can eat quite a decent percentage of your margin. Francesco: Yeah, and that's the difficult... How do we find it? Well, that's a good question. do. We do it. We... I think it's also, to be honest with you, I believe it's a lot about mentality as well. It's a mentality shift. So if you start... ⁓ Oleksij Rak: How do you find your talent? Francesco: If you are a business owner, you look at your P &L all the time, you look at your expenses and you start, you get to hire someone that is a bit more expensive than your budget, but you think is good, you are going to hire him and then you start assuming that the expense is there. All your planning going forward from that point will be that the expense is there. It's not going to change, it's going to be there. The same is with other parts. The same is also in the gross profit. It's also in the cost of the tour. It's also with sustainability. So if you assume that cost is there, you cannot avoid it because it's the right thing that is there. You need to find a way to run a business with that cost. It's not something that you can undercut. I'm going a little bit more philosophical, but it's the reality and we are proving it. You can do it. If you start thinking in your PNL, this is not a line that I can cut. This is a line that is there. and have to be like the Turgai fee, like the transportation fee. I can optimize it with scale, with different type of optimizations, negotiations with suppliers, but the line is going to be there. Then you start working on- ⁓ how to transmit maybe that cost into your pricing or into your communication. What we do, don't really transfer it to the pricing because I told you before, we cannot because we need to be cheap. But we transfer into our communication, we try. We try to make sure that the customers understand that we are doing these. The hope is we increase volumes. We have less margin, but we have more volume. and is what is happening as well. We gather more to that niche that is actually looking at these type of things ⁓ this type of added value. So I think this is the way we go. Oleksij Rak: Thank you. So you can partially just turn it into like kind of marketing effort. Yeah, of expand. Yeah, expand is there, but we can tell the rest of the markets that like we have this kind of expense because like, because we care, right? That's why I increase the sales volumes like as part of the marketing effort. Francesco: Yeah, look if a tour cannot make a profit, we have to cut it. We have some marginality ⁓ barriers. Yeah. It does, it does. It's not the easy way, that's for sure. But are not here for the easy way anyway. So we enjoy what we are doing, in the way we are doing. ⁓ Oleksij Rak: Yeah, awesome. You're doing a great job. So, and I really appreciate what you're building. Like, there anything else you would like to add to that before we wrap up? Francesco: So, no, about sustainability, don't think so. Other things you are working on, let me think. Well, about automating everything, of course, is the main part. But it's... Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Francesco: The other big bet that we are putting, as I briefly mentioned, is working better with pricing. That's the other big job that we want to do this year and in the coming years. making sure we can price smarter, which means giving a better pricing actually for customers who earlier or book in certain periods, but also moving into the the price of, for example, booking last minute or booking in periods where everything is fully booked. So we are among the few that are basically, few operators that are basically never fully booked because of the way we build our supply. we price like everyone else while ⁓ if you want in the top, top peak day, which is New Year, for example, the after New Year usually and the New Year days and the 31st, the peak, peak, peak days in certain countries. If you want to go on a tour and you are booking the night before, you might have to pay a bit more and this is something that everyone is probably willing to do. We are not doing that now because we don't have the tech to do it and we don't have the capabilities. These are little things that we're working on and they can make a definite difference and help us compete better, I think. Oleksij Rak: Thank But to be able to provide this tiny granular pricing, need to have the real-time prices. You need to have the real-time prices with regards to what's available, how much it costs. From what I understand, you're working with smaller... Francesco: Yeah. Oleksij Rak: To like smaller operators, how do you have this real time? It's not like you simply integrate and that's it. Usually tour guides do not have APIs, right? Francesco: The cost? Yeah. That's a very good question. That's a very good question. No, I'm only talking about the selling part. I'm not talking about the supply part. The supply part is the same. Maybe you can do negotiation on a seasonality basis certain supplier or some tour guides, but don't real-time pricing on the supply side. Supply is always the same, but what you can optimize is the selling part. So API integration with the online travel agencies that allow to do real-time and having our own tech able to manage the real-time pricing. That's actually the most challenging part because it means also financial reconciliations that need to be adapted, information going through the different departments that need to be adapted because the customer service team need to know about that in real time. Supply team need to know that in real time. team need to know that in real time as well. So all that is the complicated part, but we have an amazing tech team that is on the top of innovation and technologies. so they are able to keep moving, actually, yeah, moving across with the trends or even before the trends, I have to say. So on that, I'm confident we can do a good job. We are working on it. Oleksij Rak: And what's your daily work like? I was first surprised that your title is CFO. Not the best surprise, but I was like, okay, founder, but CFO. But now you're talking about all this more like pricing details and stuff. So what's your job in this company? Besides being a founder, what are your heroes like? Francesco: what's my job in all this. Okay, to be honest, to be honest with you. Oleksij Rak: All these tiny margin fractions. Francesco: To be honest with you, I don't like much the CFO title, even though it's pretty much what I do, definitely. And it's also where in my background come. I come from a finance background. I like much more the title of co-founder, which what I really am, together with my other co-founder, who is our CEO. So co-founder means you are a bit in every part of the business anyway, or at least you can speak about every part of the business. I believe you don't need to know how everything is done, ⁓ you need to know why everything is done. ⁓ I'm telling you why with what we do. If were going to ask me in the details how the automation work, etc., I wouldn't be able to tell you, to be honest. Fortunately, because have much more talented people than me working on it. But yes, so my job is maybe still more also the one of a COO, even though I am not giving myself this title. I supervise the operational part, the finance part, HR part as well, of course, with the managers that help me in all this. But when it's about strategy, about pricing, about supply strategy, every area of the business, of course I know it because it's my baby. So ⁓ I created this from scratch. So I know every part still least why it works in that way. So yeah, that's my job. More on a strategic part, ⁓ can speak about things like pricing, cetera. If you had to go me to the details, I would tell you to call my business partner and co-founder and CEO who is actually Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Francesco: knows more about that side of me. Oleksij Rak: Okay, awesome. Thanks a lot for this discussion. Is there anything else you would like to add on top of what we discussed? Francesco: No, no, I think we cover a few of the challenges that we face. I'm being very honest. sound a bit skeptical sometimes or. or pessimistic, but I'm not actually. I'm very optimistic. believe, ⁓ well, this job comes from passion, first of all. And I believe the travel industry is an industry that is evolving in a, it can evolve in a wonderful way and it will evolve in a wonderful way, but it's also an industry that moves through ups and downs all the time. And we need to be able to wave all these ups and downs. ⁓ Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Francesco: And that's it. But yeah, I see a bright future for the industry overall. That's it. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, you cannot be pessimistic being an entrepreneur, so you always need to be a Because being a 10 % entrepreneur is always facing some challenges which you need to overcome. that's it. So awesome. Yeah, awesome. Thanks a lot, Francesco, for the discussion. It was a great one. And have a great day. And the best of luck for overcoming all the challenges, you know. Francesco: Yeah, exactly. You can't. can't. Yeah, that's true. 100%. Thanks. Likewise, have a good day. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, you too.