The team at Holidayen comprises passionate travel enthusiasts. Tarun Madan is a graduate of UT Austin, where he worked with Texas Venture Labs, startup incubator of McCombs School of Business. Skills learned there helped him in shaping the idea of Holidayen to reality. Utkala Mohanty is a graduate of Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, and a former Product Development Manager at Unilever. We are supported by Mitanshu Garg, another traveler enthusiast and two interns for product development and content management.

Tarun Madan spoke to Lokvani about the concept:

·         What prompted you all to take this idea forward?

As travelers, we had always found trip planning painful and time consuming, especially choosing what all to see and experience at a destination. All available trip planning resources weren’t really simplifying the process, so I decided to build something that could effectively eliminate all travel planning hassles. As part of an entrepreneurship course at Austin, I interviewed several travelers, most of whom thought that an automated travel planner would be a great way to organize their trips, provided it could be personalized to their interests. I discussed this idea with my friends, and thus began our journey of creating Holidayen.

·       What are the initial hurdles you faced and how did you overcome it?

Bootstrapping on limited resources is always a challenge, and we did not want to compromise on the ultimate vision for our product. We had to work as a lean startup, learning and implementing best possible solutions to create a product from the idea. Developing the product with limited resources, our approach has been to engage our early users and quickly act upon their feedback to constantly improve the product.

·        What are the unique features about Holidayen compared to other travel sites?

Holidayen is the first fully automatic travel planner that covers the widest breadth of aspects related to travel, including transportation options, sights, activities and hotels. It provides automatic recommendations and also creates an automatic itinerary with optimum routes for all the days of travel. With our latest offering on www.holidayen.com, travelers can plan complex multi-city travel within minutes.

·         Can you share with us your marketing strategy and revenue model?

Acquiring users organically by publishing unique, engaging content on destinations is our main strategy.  We also use social media to target people seeking information on destinations and planning travel.  Our travel planning service is free, and revenue is through online bookings made through Holidayen.

   What has been the response and what do you envision for the future?

The response has been very good so far, and we keep engaging with our users for feedback on our new features. Going forward, we will add new features including an improved recommendation engine, and additional travel related options. We are also developing iOS app to enable people plan travel on the go and revamping our existing Android apps.

·         Finally why should people use Holidayen?

Instead of spending weeks researching a trip, travelers can now book personalized holidays in seconds with Holidayen. We offer a wide range of things to do and experiences at more than 300 international destinations, so that users do not have to refer to several resources as they previously used to. All the information they need, from getting around a city, locations on a map, opening hours and ratings of attractions to tours and cultural shows are available to help them have a wonderful, hassle-free trip.

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