Travelplanet24: from Startup to a successful company | Athens ...

A mini interview with the founder of www.travelplanet24.gr Philipp Brinkmann

How did you come up with the idea of launching a company?

I actually always wanted to be an entrepreneur because I liked the idea of creating something. That?s why I focused on entrepreneurship during my studies. The university I studied at (Munich Business School) is the university with the most founders and entrepreneurs in Germany. Many courses/classes about writing business plans were offered and we had many projects where we actually had to found companies.

The idea to found travelplanet24.com started at a beach in Milos during my summer holidays in 2004. The initial idea was actually to sell Greek ferry tickets to foreigners (Italians, French, British, German, etc). After researching the idea for some months I realized that there was no big Online Travel Agent (OTA) present on the Greek market at that time. Since I was living in Germany back then this seemed very strange for me, because online travel was already one of the most successful e-commerce business models in Western Europe. After considering it for some time I decided to move to Greece in May 2005 to start the company.

Why did you decide to base the company in Greece?

The reason for Greece is easy. I saw an opportunity on the market for a business model which was very successful at that time in Western Europe. In 2005 online travel was already a mature and proven e- commerce model. Together with books it was actually the top-selling product online. In Greece, though, there were only one or two websites which at that time were still very small and from a technological point of view not very developed. Since I am half Greek and already knew the language, it was an easy decision for me ? I just applied something that others had already successfully done elsewhere.

What problems did you face during the early years as a startup?

Obviously I was quite naive when I moved to Greece to start the company. I didn?t know anything about the Greek reality when it comes to bureaucracy and/or entrepreneurship. On the other hand, had I known all the facts, problems and obstacles from the beginning, I would probably never have done this step. The biggest problems were definitely the bureaucracy and other things like cooperation with banks, etc. To explain to an employee of the Greek tax office back in 2005 that we are planning to sell travel services online was almost the same like telling him that we are planning a commercial airline which is going to fly to the moon. Nobody believed us; nobody could imagine how this could work ? many people actually thought that we are gangsters and that we are going to steal money from consumers. What else would somebody do on the Internet? We had the same problems everywhere, also with the Greek National Tourism Organization in order to get the license, Banks in order to be able to charge credit cards, tax offices in order to get a VAT-ID, ?

After almost one year of feeling like Don Quixote fighting the windmills we finally managed to overcome all obstacles and to go live in April 2006. However, these were only the initial issues. Other problems we came across over the next few years were finding funds/finances to support our business as well as finding experienced employees. Since there weren?t many successful e-commerce companies in Greece it was extremely difficult to find experts in web development, web design, online marketing,? The last one is actually still one of the biggest challenges for us.

How did the company evolve during the following years?Over the following years things continued to be difficult. We were struggling with cash flow issues since it was very difficult to find investors who were willing to invest in an online company and also pay a fair price. Furthermore, we were constantly searching for the right people to cover key positions. On the other hand, we quickly saw that there was a serious need for online travel services on the Greek market and we were growing with growth rates of over 100% annually.

In the beginning of 2010 when we saw that things would become difficult with the economic crises we had three solutions:

? ? ?

The first one was to downsize and potentially decrease salaries or even fire people. The second one was to sell our company or to merge with a competitor. The third one was go abroad and compete with other international players on other markets.

We started with Poland in September 2010 and expanded to 10 more countries over the next one and a half years. This was the key decision during the last 6 years. Because of this decision we have 85 employees today and we are targeting a turnover of 100 million euro for 2012.

What are your plans for the future?

Our goal is to become the biggest OTA in South Eastern Europe. Today we are already within the top five and we are growing faster than most of our competitors. Furthermore, we are currently opening a regional call center in Bucharest and hope to finish with everything until the end of the year. For 2013 we are planning to open an office in Latin America and to start our expansion there since the opportunities in this region are very promising as well.

What are the 3 most important things that you learned through your entrepreneurial journey?

1. Aim high! Set your goals and set them high. If somebody else has done something like this before, then why shouldn?t you be able as well?

2. Never give up! There will be times when things are going to be extremely difficult and when you think that you won?t make it. Don?t give up continue fighting, in the end you will succeed. If it would be easy, others would already have done it before you!

3. Invest in people! Make your employees co-owners. You can?t do it alone if you don?t have the right people around you and if they are not willing to work and fight as hard as you do, you will not succeed. They need to feel ownership!

What space do you think there is in the Travel industry for new startups?

I am not sure if there is still a lot of space in the classic OTA business, but obviously there are still some regions with opportunities. In other travel related business models I think there are still a lot of opportunities. A few examples would be:

? ? ? ?

meta search / price comparison engines innovative mobile concepts niche products like cruises, online booking of sailing yachts, ? business concepts like Airbnb.com are interesting and I think there is more to come.

What advice would you give to an aspiring entrepreneur set to launch his startup?

Everything I said under question six. The only thing I would add is that sometimes it makes a difference to have an experienced manager/expert onboard. What I want to say with this is that many startups especially the bootstrapped ones are very reluctant in hiring good managers because of the cost. We had exactly the same issue in the past. However, to have an experienced manager in finance or marketing in my opinion is the key to success and justifies the cost. Usually the company will benefit from an investment like this in the long run, even if the cost seems high in the beginning. Furthermore there are other options of remuneration than just salaries. Of course equity is the most valuable thing an entrepreneur has on the other hand if you don?t have cash it?s probably your only option.

There is a saying that the idea counts for 1% and the remaining 99% is execution, do you agree?

I totally agree. If you look at our company it is exactly what we did.

We didn?t reinvent the wheel! We didn?t have the super wow idea! We just took a mature and proven business model and applied it to a market where it wasn?t well known yet. After that the hard part was the execution. In my opinion the execution is what differentiates successful start ups from non successful.

Source: http://athens.startupweekend.org/2012/09/26/travelplanet24-from-startup-to-a-successful-company/

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