With Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.'s launch last week of GoBe.com,
RCCL said its goal is to create the first recognized brand in the tours and
activities space.
Billy Campbell, GoBe's managing director, said the company
conducted extensive research into the marketplace with the assistance of the
Boston Consultant Group (BCG).
"Of course, all the travel experts in this room can
easily name a handful of websites offering tours and activities," Campbell
said at the launch of GoBe.com. "But BCG found that the average traveler
could not and that this space was ripe for development. The reality is that
brand awareness in this sector of travel has been practically nonexistent."
GoBe and parent company TourTrek are RCCL subsidiaries based
in the Cayman Islands. GoBe will operate as an independent division of RCCL,
said Larry Pimentel, RCCL's chief destination experience officer.
GoBe.com is a tour-booking website that enables users to
search for and book tours and activities. It includes the ability to search by
cruise itineraries, destination, interests or group requirements. Users can
also work with GoBe to create "Travel Creations," tailor-made
activities not available elsewhere online.
"We believe that many destinations across the globe
have been underserved and deserve to be discovered in an authentic, localized
manner," Campbell said. "Some actually call it deeper travel. Travelers
and locals deserve an easy-to-use digital platform with which to research,
compare [and] book tours and excursions using the device of their choice,
including desktops, laptops, tablets and your ever-present mobile phone."
At the time of its launch, Campbell said, GoBe has more than
8,000 tours in 896 cities and 97 countries. He said each experience on the site
has been "hand-selected."
"We believe ourselves to be the fastest-growing tours
and excursion website today," he said. "By summer, we expect to double
the number of experiences bookable online, and by the middle of next year,
2018, we're confident that our offerings will be north of 30,000."
At the time of its launch, GoBe is not offering commissions
for travel agents.
"Our initial sort of business strategy is not dealing
with the individual travel agent," Campbell said. While he did say that
GoBe "might do some partnerships" with large agencies down the road,
he added, "But that's not where we're focused to start."
During his presentation of GoBe, Campbell quoted Virtuoso
CEO Matthew Upchurch as saying, "I found GoBe to be the most remarkable
platform for the sales of experiences that I've seen to date."
Both Campbell and Pimentel said other industry partnerships,
such as with hotel chains or airlines, are also possible down the road but made
no formal announcements.
Campbell also quoted Michael Finn, national director of
Marriott Vacations Worldwide, as saying, "We are looking forward to
working closely with GoBe to enhance the experiential elements of all of our
events and marketing platforms."
Since GoBe soft-launched, Campbell said, the site has been
drawing 9,000 daily visitors without any promotional activity.
"Our soft launch has demonstrated the strength of our
software, and we continue to make improvements every day," he said. "Our
[business-to-business] strategy is off to a very strong smart. We look forward
to making several partnership announcements in the coming months."
Citing research from Phocuswright, Campbell said he believes
the tours and activities space holds great potential for companies like GoBe.
"A key point is that more than 80% of the gross
bookings in the activities market today remain offline, and therein lies a
great opportunity for us," he said.
Additional competition in the tours and activities space is
not necessarily a bad thing, according to Barry Karp, co-owner of Shore Trips,
a Milwaukee-based shore excursion company with which GoBe will compete.
"When these companies come in, we kind of welcome the
competition, because the competition keeps us on our toes," he said. "It
keeps us thinking, to be more creative. There's probably room for even more
competition."
However, he observed that the lack of commissions could
alienate agents from GoBe.
Karp said agents provide a vital number of bookings for
Shore Trips, with 98% of the company's bookings commissioned to agents. About
half of that 98% comes from repeat customers who book directly with the
company, but their original travel agent still receives commission based on
Shore Trips' system.
"We've always tried to support the travel agent
community because we were a travel agency before we started Shore Trips,"
he said.