With support from SME Instrument Phase 1 Touriocity has demonstrated technical feasibility and commercial viability of IMPACT, undertaking a granular assessment of requirements and risks to technical integration with OTA, reviewing software used in Europe, validating assumptions around market demand and forecasted usage of the service, identifying of barriers to localisation of content and developing an advanced business plan with growth forecasts in the EU28.
The Touriocity team identified and contacted key stakeholders, researched target markets, identified barriers to growth (including technical, commercial and regulatory risks) and calculated cost of rollout in each market, including client acquisition costs. In addition, the team established project milestones for subsequent tasks during rollouts (including technical localisation, regulatory research and compliance, market research, dissemination activities and analysis of data for optimization of technology) during Phase 2 of the SME Instrument. These findings were verified against input from UKTI and other business partners (including Gatwick Airport and Visit London), assessing likelihood of success and refining Touriocity’s commercial risk register. Touriocity laid out actions, milestones and outputs for each of the target markets and devised a tiered structure for the rollout (from most populous cities, with high volumes of tourism, to smaller ‘secondary’ urban centres). The findings from this exercise were compiled in the attached feasibility assessment and a separate business plan, with forecasts of revenue and expenditure broken down from Jan 2016 to December 2020.
The business plan also includes a detailed roadmap for commercialisation based on existing price points and new business models examined, incorporating input from relevant stakeholders and current/future business partners and developing a three-pronged strategy for targeted rollouts to 156 cities in EU28.
In addition, Touriocity examined strategies to maximise RoI from targeted rollouts in all critical and applied findings from primary research (including discussions with 200 tour guides in 15 countries) to produce a viable roadmap for European expansion including partnerships with Gatwick, Ryanair, Intercontinental, LoveHomeSwap, DesignHotels, TravelPort.
Finally, Touriocity has also undertaken extensive testing and validation of IMPACT with 6,000+ users from the London School of Economics (LSE) and 10,000 users of MyGatwick, reaching TRL7 during August 2015.
