Business Description

Booking a trip is stressful. On average, people spent thirty hours researching. Enter Baboo. We connect you directly with Local Destination Experts who know their destination inside-out. They know the best hotels, the best experiences, the best locations, etc. Based on your preferences, they will help you create your perfect trip! Baboo is the ultimate matchmaker for travelers by matching them directly with local travel designers and by matching their travel itineraries with their travel personalities.

Booking a vacation with Baboo is very simple. First, the traveler answers a few questions about their trip, such as the destination, number of travelers, budget, interests, etc. Our Trip Builder Tool will guide the traveler through the process of adding all the details of their trip to help Baboo understand their needs. Step Two, based on their travel details and preferences, Baboo will match them with an in-destination expert who lives and breathes the type of trip they desire. The traveler may choose the individual that they feel is best matched with their interests. Step Three, the traveler works with the expert to plan out the perfect trip. Their in-destination expert will give them the best recommendations and advice on the places that are a must-see, hotels that are hip (or not),
activities and spots they might not want to miss, and the best local insights and tips. The final step is to review the trip, book it, then sit back and relax!

About the Local Experts:
Best-in-Class Travel Experts
They are all hand-picked, highly experienced, licensed, and insured experts that are passionate about designing a journey for you.
24/7 Concierge Support
Our local in-destination experts provide Concierge Service 24/7. They are easily accessible, polite, and responsive to any requests, ensuring that your journey runs as smoothly as possible.
Value for Money
Without the need for intermediaries, you’ll connect directly with the expert who has access to the best-negotiated prices. You’ll have savings of up to 40% vs booking with a typical travel agent.
Regenerative Mindset
All of our local in-destination experts have a warm heart for the environment, work with locals, and keep animal welfare in mind.

Problem

Planning & booking a multi-day trip is painful and overwhelming. It can take more than 35 hours to plan a trip and 67% of people stress in the process. Travelers have the fear of missing out, and it’s very hard to plan a trip and make all the decisions for their group.

Solution

Is a platform to design & book a custom-made trip directly with a local, expert in designing authentic trips, stress-free.​ With Baboo you plan and book a 100% custom trip that you couldn’t plan even if you wanted to, with uncanned local knowledge, you plan and book in 2 hours rather than 35, you get 24/7 support on the ground, and 20%+ cheaper.

We are building new features that no one else has. Ultrafast & intelligent trip customization so both customers & local experts work together to build a proposal quickly. We are also building a Natural Language Processing Trip Search so AI detects the intent, classifies it, and recommends the best trips based on the traveler’s needs. Then, the client can easily view the curated accommodation & trip recommendations to add to their itinerary and get a quote from a local expert. We are also connecting travelers via Whats App or Facebook Messenger directly with the expert and Baboo, to make trip planning super easy, from any device.

We are also building tools to attract niche influencers (Photographers, Wellness Instructors, etc) to easily plan a trip with us, share with followers, manage markups, share trips and manage group payments directly using Baboo. And we are building tools to easily share the trip with your friends & family, or even allow other people to join the trip to make it more affordable for everyone, and meet people.

Business Model

We charge local experts a 14% fee for each trip sold, and we charge a 4% fee to travelers at the time of booking.

Market Projection

The market size is huge at 383 billion in 2022. The Adventure Travel industry suffered a big loss with the pandemic, as the value in 2019 was 683 billion. It’s expected to come back to the same value in 2024, and it has a CAGR projection from 2022 to 2030 of a 28.6% Annual Growth rate and is expected to be worth 2.8 Trillion by 2023. The time to enter the market is now!

Competition

The adventure travel industry has lots of competitors, and there are a few that have done great in the market. We have direct competition from companies offering a similar business model like Evaneos, KimKim, and TravelLocal amongst others, and there are indirect competitors with companies like Abercrombie & Kent, G Adventures & Intrepid Travel all targetting the same market, but with different adventures and expectations.

Traction & Customers

We are a marketplace so a big part of our traction has been dedicated to curating local experts and finding the best local partners, onboarding them, and getting them ready to receive inquiries. So far, we have accepted around 580 companies in 90 countries, and these companies have loaded over 2500 tours on our platform. We’ve had around 300,000k in bookings, with an average ticket price of $10000 USD per booking.

Investors

We raised a friends & family round with SAFE NOTES for $650,000 USD in January 2021 to start and develop the platform.

Terms

We are looking to raise 500,000 USD with a SAFE note or similar with a Cap of $6,000,000 Pre-money on the next equity financing round.

For this funding round our main goal is to generate traction, achieve product-market fit, validate our sales funnel, and have a strong position for an Equity Financing round next year.

Risks

All startups have risks.