May the 16th, 2023 - The very young Croatian startup Turneo hasn't even been on the market for a whole year yet, but despite that, their product is already being sought by the Americans.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Josipa Ban writes, at an international level, the tourist experience market (at least the one that represents excursions, tours and attractions and is worth as much as 250 billion US dollars) has somehow remained "offline", and it's even managed to do so in the time of ubiquitous digitisation.

The reservation of what most people travel to different countries for still takes generally place in a more or less old-fashioned way - at hotel receptions, at travel agencies, at an organiser's office or stand... But the young Croatian startup Turneo, founded only in March 2022, wants to change all of that.

After half a year of work on the development of the platform, two friends and founders, Matija Marijan and Fran Kauzlaric, offered the market a B2B platform in August that brings together what was previously incompatible - hotels (sellers), organisers (those who offer experiences), and tourists. And doing that, according to these young entrepreneurs who left successful careers to start their own business, was a big, if not their biggest, challenge to date.

"We had to find a way to solve a problem for which no one has yet found a solution at the global level. So, out of nothing, we needed to create a functional platform that would be useful to all of the aforementioned groups. How demanding the task was for us was also showcased by the fact that Airbnb recently paused their "Airbnb Experiences" project, which was supposed to connect tourists with the local offer of tours and attractions. The Tour platform is different because it is oriented towards the business segment, i.e. hotels, apartments, campsites, etc., which, through Tour, can digitally offer their guests a selection of tours, activities, excursions, wellness treatments, etc.'' explained Marijan.

The fact that the creators of the Croatian startup Turneo is very much on the right track when it comes to conquering the market has been also shown by the fact that today, only nine months after entering the market, 39 hotels and about 30 organisers are using the platform. Most of them are Croatian clients, but hotels in Prague and even in distant Zanzibar are also now using it.

Investors were also quick to recognise the potential, and back at the beginning of this year, the Croatian startup Turneo received its first investment of 800,000 euros. That investment round was led by Ascension Ventures and Underline Ventures, with participation from Silicon Gardens and numerous angel investors. Their goal is to conquer the European market for now, but the potential is global.

The founders of the Croatian startup Turneo have pointed out that they already have some serious inquiries from across the pond in America, but they are still a small team, numbering a mere eight people, so their focus will be on Europe for some time yet. The largest part of the investment, as Marijan pointed out, will be invested in the development of the platform, as well as in the operational part of the business, i.e. the management of reservations, the overall user experience, requests and so on.

"We'll be constantly upgrading the platform in accordance with the experiences from the field," explained Matija. In addition to all of that, they 'e only now taking a bigger step into the market and the sales world, which they have not dealt with intensively as yet because they were primarily focused on development and their existing clients. The advantages of using their platform, according to Kauzlaric, are multiple.

"The main thing is the satisfaction of the guests. Guests who book a tour or a specific activity together with hotel accommodation are on average 18% more satisfied than guests who only book accommodation, TUI research has shown. This is also the main reason why hotels choose to use our platform. The next benefit is is that, from the commission on the sold tour or excursion, they generate additional income, and the third is that our service relieves the staff at the reception, because the guests now have all the information about additional activities on offer to them in one place, through the Tour application,'' he pointed out.

In addition, he added, organisers also profit from their platform, as they no longer have to go around hotels offering guests their activities and tours. "When an organiser connects to our platform, they're automatically connected to all the hotels within our network," explained Kauzlaric.

This small and ambitious team is also working on the automation of support for hotel guests in the experience segment through the Marc chatbot, which was created through the implementation of the controversial ChatGPT. They plan to offer this "virtual concierge" product, whose function is to advise tourists on what to do and see when on holiday in a certain place, to major global hotel chains.

For more, make sure to check out our dedicated business section.

4th May 2023 - The new B2B travel experience platform Turneo drastically simplifies how hotels and other travel brands offer and manage in-destination experiences.

In-destination experiences remain the single most elusive opportunity in travel. For travellers, they represent the highlight of their holiday; the very reason they want to travel at all. Yet for travel brands, they pose an operational nightmare. Thanks to a lack of digital infrastructure, the $250B experience market remains overwhelmingly offline, complex, and expensive to offer. This is becoming an ever-growing problem, as more and more travel brands are looking to use experiences to differentiate their offering (so-called Experiential Hospitality).

Turneo’s B2B travel experience platform changes that. It enables any travel brand to seamlessly connect to, recommend, and manage the full range of travel experiences: from transfers to tours, from adventurous hikes to relaxing retreats. Previously this type of technology was only available to the largest global players, but Turneo now gives these tools to everyone. Hotels, campsites, and travel brands now have a means of sharing their truly unique recommendations with travellers via a simple booking tool.

The plug-and-play solution can be seamlessly integrated across all customer touchpoints, including the new travel planning chatbots that will soon become standard amongst hotels and OTAs.

“By combining the incredible interactions of ChatGPT with the unique knowledge and insights of local travel brands, guests get what they value most: meaningful, immersive experiences, recommended by a local expert, without any hassle in booking” explains Matija Marijan, CEO and Co-founder of Turneo.

Historically, offering experiences created an operational headache for hotels and travel brands. Overstretched staff were left juggling in-house offers with third-party contracts, tracking availability in real-time, and staying on top of guest requests. Now, Turneo’s platform provides a one-stop shop that centralises the management of all third-party tour and activity providers, as well as in-house experiences. In this way, all experiences can be integrated into a single view for easier tracking of performance.

We want our partners to focus on what they do best, and we take care of everything else. The hotels, hostels, and campsites that we work with today have the most incredible stories to tell about their local area and the best insights into what their guests should do during their stay. Turneo is about providing the tools to help them deliver those experiences.

- Matija Marijan, CEO and Co-founder of Turneo

In addition to their API which can interact with OpenAI’s GPT models, Turneo also offers

no-code tools to build customer-facing experience stores in minutes.“Just as Shopify enables every entrepreneur to create an amazing e-commerce store, Turneo enables every travel

business to create a fully tailored experience store, without the need for tech investment and resources” explains Matija. This means hundreds of thousands of travel brands around the world can now access a wide range of local experience options, and sell them via an intuitive, digital platform.

With Turneo, we can flex to every stage of the journey. For smaller travel brands, just starting out, our set-up takes minutes and doesn’t require any complex or costly integrations. These partners often start selling within the week and are then in a position to innovate and scale. At the other extreme, major hotel chains have seen our solution drastically simplify their operations, whilst also offering a much more sophisticated and seamless guest experience.

- Fran Kauzlarić, Co-founder of Turneo

Turneo was founded in 2022 by Matija Marijan, previously Senior Director at Expedia’s B2B division, and Fran Kauzlarić, previously Innovation Lead at Brussels Airport. The platform is currently live with travel brands across the world, and the two founders closed their first funding round of £695,000 just earlier this year. The round was led by Ascension Ventures and Underline Ventures, with participation from Silicon Gardens and angel investors including Expedia and TripActions (Navan) executives.

To showcase the power of Turneo’s platform when combined with GPT, Turneo has created travel chatbot Marco, which acts as a virtual concierge giving hotel guests bookable recommendations of local experiences. You can sign up for a demo here.