Project description
A holistic digital concierge service changing the rules
Since the emergence of digital marketing, online travel agencies have changed the tourist industry. Booking a room at a hotel is now extremely easy. However, the new system promotes big hotels and chains of service providers and excludes small local units, creating monopolies. The EU-funded GET LOCAL project supports an innovation that aims to change this trend by providing new technology to a digital agency booking platform that sells selected, personalised local services. It is based on a SaaS business model that integrates local reservation with ticketing systems and will develop a B2B booking platform for tourist units all over the world. Add to this the artificial intelligence (AI), high scalability and wide choice of local resources, and the project is bound to bring quality and breathe new life into the hospitality industry.
Objective
OTAs (Online Travel Agencies) have revolutionised the tourist and hospitality industry by the democratisation of booking information to consumers. Their focus on pricing and “standardised” offers has resulted in reduced income for hotels and local tourist service providers, as well as their power to reach potential customers. They operate in monopoly, USA dominated, and create dependency on hotels and local service providers, who cannot afford an efficient digitalized tool and struggle to distinguish themselves among the numerous offers.
GET LOCAL AG is a young and dynamic company from Zurich, Switzerland created with the aim of deploying a digital, B2B booking platform, GET LOCAL, enabling hotels and tourist service providers to combine forces and offer added value to their international guests in the form of exclusive local deals and packages. GET LOCAL operates via local branches, which are joint ventures between GET LOCAL AG and a local service provider and/or Destination Management Organisation to enable swift mobilization of local resources. It employs an in-house-developed software platform which allows high scalability and a competitive advantage to alternative solutions. It also applies Artificial Intelligence to generate personalised suggestions for tourists based on their previous experiences and demographics.
We have already launched a prototype in Zurich, Basel and Vienna, with main hotel brands and numerous local service providers already on-board. GET LOCAL has received several innovation awards and featured in numerous sites. With this SME Instrument project, we intend to prepare a technical and commercial roadmap to grow faster and more efficiently, launching GET LOCAL in at least 45 cities by 2025 (5-year post-project), thus raising up to €13.4 M revenues per local Joint Venture. We intend to create 40+ new ventures in European destinations and 5 beyond Europe, thereby creating about 150 new positions (of which 10-15 in our holding company).
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
8001 ZURICH
Switzerland
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.