On Tuesday I went down to San Francisco to visit Dave Sifry and his Offbeat Guide team. The San Francisco-based start-up company makes personalized, up-to-date travel guides that cover over 30,000 travel destinations, using a combination of search technology and articles written by both amateur and professional travel experts. In other words, "on-demand travel books, with a touch of humanity–an obvious and even innovative trend as custom printing gets cheaper."
As it stands, a company such as Offbeat Guide seems to be just custom made for a media enterprise such as HBM. Burda Media could launch and promote Offbeat Guide on Holiday Check, by simply including a little check box at the end of every transaction or hotel booking, enabling the customer to order a travel guide together with the journey. The cost for the Travel Guide (10 Dollars), would then simply be split up between Offbeat Guide an Burda Media, resulting in a win win situation for both companies involved. However, it must be remarked at this point that David Sifry and I have had great difficulties navigating through the English site of Holiday Check as we went along. As good and successful as the German site might be, the international pages clearly need to be reconsidered and restructured, as they are greatly lacking consumer friendliness. Are they to do so, I see great potential for Holiday Check to gain a considerable amount of market share in the European market, with it's strong and vast network of people recommending hotels all over the world.
Although Holiday Check's weaknesses on an international level are quite apparent, Sifry has signalised great willingness to enhance in a project with HBM in the near future.
In the past, Sifry has managed to secure some great deals for his company which has boosted his sales by a tremendous amount. He can now also put the guides on digital devices, like the Kindle from Amazon. Additionally he has partnered with Singapore Airlines to promote his Travel Guides. He is said to start translating his Travel Guides into many more European languages, making his Offbeat Guide company even more appealing for HBM with its strong focus on the European market.
@Sixth Floor: reconsider it again....
Best,
J
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