Insight
9/11 Unexpectedly Put a Rocket Under the Online Travel Industry
“So, for the online travel industry, there was this strange, perverse effect of nine-eleven, which is that it literally put a rocket under the industry.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Viator Invented the Highly Lucrative 'Skip the Line' Tour Concept
“So with the tour operator, they approached the Vatican, the church and said, what if we did this thing that we'll call skip the line? What if we charge these guys three times as much, but you let them straight in? And the Vatican, you know, the commercial, the…”
Prediction Held up
Cuthbert Predicts Viator Will Surpass $4B in Gross Revenue in 2024
“They'll do, I think, over four billion dollars in gross revenue in 2024.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sabre Relinquished Booking Software to Viator Founders After 1997 Layoffs
“We knew the names of various executives up the line, and we just kept calling the switchboard until we got through to one of them, who told us, Well have you heard of collateral damage? That project of yours, that's collateral damage. We don't want it. We don'…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Look Tours Lost Its Code and Backups in Physical Server Burglary
“Sadly, they kept all of the backups in a box that was sitting on top of the servers, and when these servers were stolen in the middle of the night, The backups of all of the code and customer records, et cetera, were stolen as well.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Look Tours Rebuilt Its Stolen Website Using the Wayback Machine
“They managed to, over the next few days, rebuild the website from, you know, using the Wayback Machine and I don't know, a whole bunch of methods that they came up with on the spot. They got the site back up and going in about four or five days.”
What-if
$20M More Capital Could Have Yielded a $1 Billion Viator Exit
“It would have been great if we'd held on to Viator for just a few more years, tossed another twenty million dollars into the bucket, and turned it into a billion dollar exit.”
Insight
Travelers Who Book Trips in Advance Are the Happiest
“The travelers who are happiest, it turns out, are the ones who plan ahead and book things in advance.”
Insight
Travel Was the Perfect Product Category to Sell Online
“Travel really lends itself to sale on the web because there are no physical goods. There's lots of product description and images required. It's just the perfect thing to sell online.”
Insight
Payment Friction Prevented Early Travel Agents From Booking Local Activities
“They weren't able to book the on-ground activities that you often would want to do when you get there, but there was also another more fundamental reason why they weren't doing it, and that is that the operators say the Moulin Rouge or the Eiffel Tower, etc., …”
Assertion Supported
Viator Typically Took a 25% Commission on Tours and Experiences
“25% was pretty normal. An average per person price on, you know, a walking tour, or a cooking class, or whatever it was, might be a hundred bucks, and we would buy that from the supplier for 75 bucks.”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
The Carlyle Group Made an 8x Return on Its Viator Investment
“I think Carlisle made eight or nine times their investment.”
Disclosure
Fox Interactive Founders Invested $30,000 Each Using Severance Payouts
“We agreed pretty much on the spot to, ah, we each put some money in, I think 30,000 dollars each, ah, on Australia had given me a terrific payout, they were generous, they gave me six months salary when they fired me, so I had the capacity to take some of that…”
