[ftio]

Social/group travel booking services like these have always interested me, and this one in particular looks really slick, but they all suffer from the same, major, challenges: customer acquisition costs and timing.

First, potential customers need to find you. And you're competing against big players running national TV ads (if I see that Trivago guy one more time...) and whose addressable market – not to mention resources/revenue – is larger than yours (i.e., their market is Anyone Who Travels as opposed to Those Who Travel in Groups).

Second, even if you are the kind of person who travels with friends somewhat regularly, you're doing it, what, maybe two times a year, three max? Not only do you have to get in front of potential users' faces, you have to do it exactly at the moment (of which you have three) they need you, and once those precious few moments have passed, you've likely lost them. (Or you have to spend a crapton of money to advertise constantly. See above.)

The way to make this a success IMHO is to target businesses. Forget consumers for now. It is really really hard to change behavior one person at a time. It's slightly easier (different kind of challenge) to sell this to the enterprise as a way of driving corporate compliance, where the benefits are clear: (policy compliance + cost savings + simplified booking process) * many trips a year.

[dougzor]

While what we've built works great for consumer groups, it goes way beyond that. We've also built:

* Small/medium business features (https://www.hopon.com/why/business)

* Features for recurring solo trips (https://www.hopon.com/why/recurring)

* The ability to share past trips with friends/colleagues for easy copying (https://www.hopon.com/why/vacation)

Give it a shot and let me know what you think!