Investment: HelloVacay is established and seeking funding/partnership

Funding Proposals Investments
1

Name of Project / DAO / Company

HelloVacay

Application type

Funding, Partnership, Recruiting

Proposal overview

In an industry that has gone largely unchanged in the last 20 years, HelloVacay seeks to reinvent the travel experience. We are a team of industry veterans and experts with a track record of success (e.g. Inc Magazine Fastest-Growing Private Companies). We are working to provide travelers all over the world with access to private, wholesale-priced inventory that has never been widely accessible before.

In 2020, we secured a partnership with Priceline for private membership rates that are not available on the public travel booking sites (e.g. Expedia, Trivago, etc.). Due to this partnership, HelloVacay is able to offer discounts of up to 50% and more off of the agreed-upon rates seen in ‘parity pricing’ with the known online travel brands.

In 2021, we have initiated a soft launch of the HelloVacay platform where we are able to offer travelers access to these private membership rates with ‘Netflix-style’ subscription pricing. This launch has been met with hundreds of user sign-ups and excitement in just the first few months. Ultimately, HelloVacay will be an aggregate of curated, wholesale-priced inventory and travel-related benefits.

Although our private, wholesale-priced travel rates would clearly be attractive to hundreds of millions of travelers within the $9.25 Trillion global travel and tourism industry, initially, we wish to narrow our marketing focus to the younger generations that are so inclined to opt for affordable, flexible subscription-based services through technology over the long-term, expensive commitments of travel clubs and timeshare.

We believe that the potential use case for decentralized crypto travel rewards/utility is a particularly strong one due largely to the already existing nature of travel rewards, points, miles, etc. We are seeking $1.5 to 2M in funding and access to competent blockchain developers.

Ultimately, HelloVacay has the opportunity to become the world’s most flexible and affordable travel club using the latest in blockchain crypto rewards with utility.

Proposal ask

$1.5-2M

Metrics for success

700,000 users in the first year post blockchain development and over 2 million users by the end of the 2nd year

External links

hellovacay.com

1 Like
2

Hey guys - great project!
It looks like we could cooperate because our projects complement each other. I am applying also for funding - fRENT is my project ( you can look at this link for project overview and some useful links Launches: Fraterium RENT ( $fRENT ) - rental platform like Airbnb on Harmony based on rental time tokenization).
Please let me know if interested to share some ideas having a cup of virtual coffee :wink:

4

HelloVacay: Community Poll

  • Yes
  • No
  • More info needed
0 voters

For “More info needed”, please Reply to ask your question

5

Hey Monica, thank you for your opinion!
Having you as a follower is a honor for me :blush::pray:
Please subscribe on Twitter to my account ( @grozav_dumitru ) for news and updates and as a special gift of life wisdom i share with you this little story about an ugly duckling and call you to never give up, even when you’re still a “laughing stock” :wink::+1::chart_with_upwards_trend::moneybag::gem:
https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=oit9DwAAQBAJ

Respectfully,
FRATE
Dumitru Grozav

ср, 15 сент. 2021 г., 10:05 Monica via Harmony Community Forum <harmony1@discoursemail.com>:

6

@rbeachum thank you for submitting your proposal.

Questions

  • We understand the proposal from a business standpoint, how does blockchain tech help with this?
  • Can you describe the team’s background and how you can handle complex blockchain-based deliverables?
  • How do you intend to reach 700K users, a bit more here on marketing strategies will help

Thanks!

7

Hi Jack,

My apologies in advance for the long-winded answers. But, I think these are great questions and I know you would agree it is important that we convey specifically what we are doing. Here you go:

We understand the proposal from a business standpoint, how does blockchain tech help with this?

Simply put, it transforms traditional travel rewards (e.g. points, etc.) into something infinitely more versatile with real-world value. Instead of just accumulating travel points that are only usable in one way for just one system, blockchain allows for the potential of users to achieve some actual monetary value of the points through the exchanges.

Additionally, it facilitates the opportunity for this ‘travel currency’ to be used for travel bookings on other platforms/applications as blockchain-based currencies continue to see more adoption in the coming years. With all that said, it would be difficult to find another industry that is a better use case than the travel industry for the substitution of decentralized rewards/utility that also connects a community of travelers as a ‘social token’. This is a $9.25 Trillion industry that has changed very little in the last 20 years (i.e. with the one exception of Airbnb).

Can you describe the team’s background and how you can handle complex blockchain-based deliverables?

Our team has a very strong track record of success in building travel brands with tens of millions of dollars in rental revenue generated with the last organization we built, ResortShare. Again, that company was rated as one of the fastest-growing private companies in the US by Inc Magazine.

With that said, we feel that there are too many organizations that put the technology first without capable processes and the capacity for the right branding/marketing. I think you would agree, dApps without a fundamental understanding of the core business and problem to solve, are futile.

So, as we sit, we make no claims related to having any expertise in blockchain. We are seeking a partnership for financial and human resources (e.g. blockchain developers) if possible. However, we are certainly prepared and equipped to do any recruiting that is necessary.

How do you intend to reach 700K users? A bit more here on marketing strategies will help.

We actually think 700K users post-development in the first year is quite conservative. Here’s why: first, we can offer ‘freemium’ access to users for inventory and prices that are simply not available on the public online travel agencies. As an example, our partnership with Priceline is for inventory that is not publicly available. So when our listing indicates 62% off it is, in fact, verifiably that percentage off all of the public rates that most travelers have access to.

Secondly, we are uniquely positioned with access to a large source of potential users and inventory that truly requires proximity, knowledge and connections - roughly 10 Million timeshare owners and 1000 independent timeshare resorts in the US alone.

Simply put, these timeshare resorts and owners are desperate to accept ‘pennies on the dollar’ for vast amounts of under-utilized inventory that has been returned back to the resort from aging owners or is still being held by the owner with no easy way out. This represents a massive untapped market of dormant, multi-room, inventory and technological inefficiencies (i.e. Web 1.0) ripe for disruption.

We have already secured strategic relationships and agreements with timeshare resorts, large property management agencies, and the 2nd largest timeshare exchange, Interval International. In fact, the Senior Executive of Interval International for 25 years is now on our executive team.

As veterans in this space, we are keenly aware of the fact that a platform that can immediately provide usable/exchangeable tokens for deposited inventory, will make it easy to generate a substantial amount of inventory and users quickly. The industry already functions on a point-based system with established point values and these tokens will be tied to actual, fractional deeded real estate with the timeshare resorts.

Please reach out to me for any needed clarification. Thanks!

image.gif
Respectfully,

8

@rbeachum Ryan, unfortunately at the current state, we won’t be able to approve this as there’s a lot more parts to be figured out. According to Apply for Grants or DAO it doesn’t fit our funding guidelines

  • Investments are for teams that have something already running on a blockchain, even if it is elsewhere like Ethereum, and they range from $250K to $1M
  • We hope to see teams be more scrappy and figure out a smaller tech team to test out the hypothesis, rather than hiring full time members and paying them high rates without this clarity is a high risk bet. We would like to co-invest with another strategic partner providing assistance from the business perspective while Harmony can be the blockchain counterpart.
  • There’s no clear product-market fit at this time, as we need to see the data of users converting to customers under the tokenized model. We know it’ll likely work but until it gets in the hands of the people deploying the inventory, and on the other end finding the customers to buy the inventory, it’s too wide of a spectrum to cover

We hope your team can test out the hypothesis by building a proof-of-concept out and circle back in 3-6 months so that we can discuss this further.