Sector Initiation February 2012

- INDEPENDENT TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH SECTOR INITIATION  FEB 2012  SOCIAL TRAVEL

SOCIAL TRAVEL – THE HUMAN TOUCH

Arise Social Travel Social travel is on the rise again and about to finally take the place it deserves in the social sphere. New and exciting models offer full integration into the main platforms, ease of review / advice upload from geo- localised smartphones, and easier monetisation.

Reputation and Trust are Key As with all disruptive business models, initial challenges must be overcome. For social travel, these are establishing reputation and trust. Companies that want to embrace the social element must first tackle the inherent concerns that individuals have when the social internet and offline worlds combine (especially in the case of collaborative consumption). A large number of start- ups complement the efforts of incumbents such as TripAdvisor and increasingly Google, and are creating a healthy disruption.

An Exciting Opportunity for Investors Now that social networks have evolved and entered the mainstream, social travel start-ups can prosper. Renewed interest is illustrated by Google and TripAdvisor’s increasingly serious foray into the sector, meaning this is a space to keep an eye on. This report presents the main reasons behind social travel’s coming of age, and analyses some of the more interesting models and companies. GUILLAUME BONNETON [email protected] : +44 207 101 7578

MALCOLM FERGUSON [email protected] London: +44 207 101 7595

Important disclosures appear at the back of this report. GP Bullhound LLP is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority in the United Kingdom

SOCIAL TRAVEL – THE HUMAN TOUCH

SOCIAL – THE NEXT DEVELOPMENT IN ONLINE TRAVEL?

Travel first moved online in 1996 with the launch of , providing consumers a more efficient way to book hotels and flights. In the early days, the services were identical from traditional bricks-and-mortar travel agencies, but lowered barriers for companies wanting to target consumers with information on the full scope of travel related products from flights to hotels. This led to a boom in the amount of travel products and services available and led to the natural development of travel -search engines such as , which pulled together the best information and prices from a wide array of different sources, not only saving time for the user, but also making information much more accessible.

What online travel agencies and travel search engines did well was provide factual information about the product. They neglected, however to provide independent, qualitative information, which came into the mainstream with review aggregators such as TripAdvisor, Zoover and Holidaycheck. Travel reviews are so effective because they provide would-be travellers with trusted, non-biased information about what companies trying to sell. Doubts about the quality of the reviews (bias, different demographic profiles etc.) disappear when you can use your social graph to source even more trusted information from friends and family motivated to enhance your travel experience.

S OCIAL T R A V E L E VOLUTION

Online Travel Social Networks

Social Travel

Source: GP Bullhound

Many companies use social tools (e.g. “likes”, viral etc.) in a way which helps improve their customer acquisition and brand image, but for a company to fully capitalise on the benefits of social they must incorporate the human aspect (trusted sharing of information, utilisation of the travel knowledge of friends and family, interaction etc.). In our opinion, companies have been largely unsuccessful in achieving this goal, at least in Europe.

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THE SOCIAL TRAVEL LANDSCAPE – THEN AND NOW

It has widely been thought that travel lends itself particularly well to online socialisation, and that as a result it would represent one of the largest and most successful activities for social web 1.0 and 2.0. This was predicated by several factors. Travel Online is Huge

The traditional travel industry, with the dematerialised nature of its products, historically high level of regulation, complex cost structure, myriad of more or less efficient players, and lack of price transparency, was ripe for a significant web-led shake up. Indeed, it was more profoundly impacted by the development of the internet, and at an earlier stage, than most other sectors of the economy. Today, travel represents:  The single largest expense online for European consumers  30% of the total B2C e-commerce market in Europe (source: PhoCusWright, eMarketer) in 2010  An industry where 35% of transactions occur online (versus 10% for total retail) (source: PhoCusWright, 2011) Travel is Social

Travel plans, past, present and future, count as some of the main discussion topics among colleagues, friends and family. Comparing notes on a destination and dispensing advice on where to stay are some of the surest ice-breakers in all cultures. People are typically proud of their travels and like to discuss them. As important as where you travel, is who you travel with, showing how core socialisation is to travel. Travel is Heavily Researched and Opinions Matter

Travel, and in particular holidaying, is not only very expensive, but in many cases, people only get to go once a year. As a result, opinions of trusted parties matter hugely. This explains why we spend more time researching our travel than for most other expenses.

% OF UK C O N S U M E R S W HO C O N S U L T R E V I E W S B EFORE M A K I N G A P URCHASE

Booking hotels, holidays or travel tickets 27% 41% 68%

Buying a car 21% 38% 59%

Buying or renewing insurance 11% 26% 37%

Chosing a bank, mortgage or loan provider 10% 23% 33%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

Always consult reviews Often consult reviews

Source: Reevoo, September 2011

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A Difficult Start

Despite this auspicious environment, social travel has not yet reached the potential that many foresaw. In particular, the first wave of “Social Travel” start-ups was by and large unsuccessful. While communities in games and dating benefited from huge viral user growth and impressive revenue streams, social travel communities such as WAYN and Dopplr suffered from several challenges in our view:  Lack of critical mass for the communities: Community fragmentation, with a plethora of sites purporting to connect users to their fellow travellers, and little or no integration between networks, meant that no particular site managed to reach the necessary critical mass of travel-oriented members  Limited monetisation: Users who visited the site in search of travel recommendations were in general only at the beginning of their decision-making funnel and as such not ready to make a booking through the OTA (limiting ability to effectively monetise). The main revenue stream was through advertising, but limited audience, often spread around many geographies, meant that CPMs and percentage of inventory sold were low  Unappealing community profiles and content: Although most of us travel at least once a year, frequent travellers tend to belong to rather disparate groups: backpackers, business travellers and wealthy people. Online communities found it difficult to segment between members, and built heteroclite communities, less likely to create adoption and loyalty among users. Also, the social profile of these communities, with higher representation of frequent travellers, did not reflect the average person’s network of friends, and made them less attractive to the general population. As a result, most profiles were inactive, leading to content of limited interest Social Travel 2.0: Reload

In 2006, Facebook opened its doors to the wider public (having previously restricted access to a selection of US universities), making the second wave of social travel possible. Facebook were able to do what the travel-focused communities had difficulty. It was able to grow its loyal user base at such a rate that it achieved a critical mass internationally. Today, Facebook has over 800m users - a reach of almost 40% of the global internet population.

Today, this new wave of online social travel operators is emerging, which harness the improved environment and hopefully offer answers to social web 1.0’s challenges, namely:  Critical mass through integration with established generalist social networks (Facebook, , Linkedin, Google +): - Facebook is doing to the social travel world what roads did for the Romans. The Facebook infrastructure and community allows social travel sites to not only reach a vast number of users, but also act as a tool for simplified account creation, viral audience acquisition and granular social information, among other things. And that is without

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taking into account Linkedin (business users) and Google+ (early adopters) - On top of this, integration with Twitter will become increasingly important. This platform has been evolving and is now much more able to help users discover things in which they may be interested. With the advancements in semantic search, travel could leverage the platform to help would-be travellers find new and exciting places to visit  Attractive community profiles and content: - By mirroring the social graph of the member, the core community of activity/advice/review sharing offered by social travel operators is much more likely to fit the member’s interest and profile, create trust and lead to higher levels of activity and engagement - What’s more, the development of clever and simple smartphone-based on-the-go review/advice uploads has revolutionised the content aggregation and consumption processes, making them easier and more real-time and relevant  Strong monetisation potential: - The concomitant explosions of local and mobile advertising benefits greatly engaged social travel communities - Targeted social advertising on the large generalist social networks and their third party apps is fast increasing - Group buying and collaborative consumption also create new and important revenue streams

As a result, social travel is on the rise, and the space is becoming crowded again, with a large number of start-ups complementing the efforts of online travel incumbents such as TripAdvisor and increasingly Google. However, thanks to the integration within the generalist social network platforms, the large number of start-ups does not hinder the development of the whole space by fragmenting the potential audience, as happened during social travel 1.0.

Travel is still behind in terms of usage on social networks compared to its potential, but is catching up fast. Indeed, in contrast with two sectors which already successfully harness the social opportunity, gaming and dating, travel remains behind (if one compares worldwide audiences on the web and through Facebook apps).

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T HE O N L I N E T R A V E L S ECTOR HAS NOT YET S UCCESSFULLY I NTEGRATED INTO S OCIAL N ETWORKS

900 844 800 700

600 511 500 376 400 300 200 125 100 24 37 0 Gaming Travel Dating (1) (2) Internet Visitors Facebook App Users

Source: 1) comScore: Worldwide UMVs (million), Nov 2011; 2) appdata: Cumulated Facebook monthly app users (million) of top 120 app, Jan 2012

Likewise, an analysis of the top audiences for Facebook apps reveals the relatively low presence of travel so far (only 2 in top 25).

T OP 25 F A C E B O O K A PPLICATIONS

Monthly app users (m) 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

Gaming Travel Other

Source: Appdata; January 2012

The top 15 pure-play social travel apps on Facebook (excluding the likes of TripAdvisor and Yelp), have cumulative unique app users of c.4 million in January 2012, still only a fraction of successful social games like CityVille or Farmville (over 30 million), and social dating networks like (9.4 million users), or Zoosk (7.3 million users). This highlights how nascent the sector still is and the size of the opportunity in the next 5-10 years. One could argue that dating and gaming are daily activities, whereas one travels only a few times a year – still, travel, especially if one includes related activities such as visiting bars and restaurants, represents one of the largest topics of conversation and socialising, and we believe the killer apps able to capture and aggregate online these discussions and advice will soon command huge audiences.

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T OP 1 5 P URE -P L A Y S O C I A L T R A V E L S I T E S – F A C E B O O K A PP T RAFFIC

Monthly app users (‘000) 2,800

290 290

130 130

60 20 10 3 2 1 1 1 0.4 0.4

Source: Appdata; January 2012

Indeed, the only player of size is TripAdvisor, and the challengers still only attract audiences on Facebook in the thousands rather than millions. However, an analysis of the landscape rapidly convinces that a new wave of promising social travel companies has emerged, leveraging this improved environment, which will lead to improved audience metrics. This has been seen especially with WAYN who, by changing their strategy to focus on intentions broadcasting and capturing what users want to do and where they want to go, has managed to more than double its audience over the last 12 months. Current Landscape

We include in “social travel” all online platforms, sites and apps that purport to reproduce online the socialisation directly related to travel. We do not place the use of social networks for travel marketing activities under the “Social Travel” banner.

Within the social travel landscape, 5 key verticals have emerged which leverage “social” in different ways and at different stages of the travel process: 1. Discovery – utilising your social graph to be inspired about travel destinations 2. Planning – deciding where / when / how to book using user generated reviews 3. Business trip planning – specific category in our view, with focus on limiting “wasted” time whilst travelling and optimising opportunities to meet up with contacts 4. Live recommendations/information sharing – Whilst travelling, finding where to eat and drink, what to visit, but also who to meet, including in the plane 5. Collaborative consumption/group buying – e.g. private jet charter, hotel deals, carpooling, short-term private accommodation rental, etc.

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S OCIAL T R A V E L L ANDSCAPE

Before Trip During Trip

1 Discovery

2 Planning

3 Business Trip Planning

4 Live Recommendations / Info. Sharing

5 Collaborative Consumption / Group Buying

Source: GP Bullhound 1. Discovery

Four out of ten international visitors (38%) choose their destination based on friends & relatives' recommendations in 2011, according to global benchmarking survey Travelsat. This shows the huge opportunity which exists in being able to create a platform which travellers can use to leverage the knowledge and experiences of their network (a network which is now far larger thanks to social networks).

Most of the focus in the social travel space has been on providing potential travellers with inspiration on destinations utilising the knowledge and experience from their social graph. 2. Planning

Review sites in travel have been active and successful for a long time, and to a certain extent represent the first and most obviously successful social travel business model – although the social element, represented by the user-generated content, is limited to the extent that most of the reviews are anonymous for the reader, and do not create any community feeling.

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Reviews are powerful to the travel industry because they drive transactions. High quality and trustworthy reviews can reduce the time it takes for a potential customer to become comfortable with making a big ticket purchase, such as the annual summer holiday, and therefore make them purchase prone sooner.

Arguably the most successful social travel company to-date is TripAdvisor, a site that aides customers in gathering travel information, posting reviews and opinions of travel- related content. The website is supported by an advertising business model and is as such free to users, who provide most of the content. It has achieved clear leadership in the US, with a reach of c.10% of monthly visitors of travel websites, and is becoming a go-to brand for travel planning.

In Europe the situation is different, owing to several structural factors:  Language diversity allowing local players to dominate linguistic pools  Higher importance of leisure travel due among others to longer vacation days  Longer stays in resorts, leading to higher importance of package tour operators  Dominance of the independent hotels (2/3 of rooms in Europe) versus large chains (2/3 of rooms in the US)  Higher proportion of campsite holidays

Two local players in Europe (Zoover in the Netherlands, Holidaycheck in Germany) in particular are prospering alongside TripAdvisor with a focus on the leisure/resort accommodation reviews.

In December 2010, TripAdvisor launched an integration with Facebook which instantly personalises the site, prioritising on the page reviews from friends, popular destinations among friends and an interactive social map. This functionality essentially pulls together knowledge and experience within ones own social network, into a traveller friendly information portal, marking a step towards the holy grain of reviews – to combine search, social networks and reviews. This enables the provision of fully targeted/relevant and therefore highly valuable reviews made by those with a similar demographic profile to the user. It is so popular that after only one year, usage of the TripAdvisor Facebook app was as high as 13 million people in January 2012, compared to 45 million on the website.

Interestingly though, the app seems to be still mainly used to read reviews, maybe check where friends have been using the Travel Map function, rather than to upload and share reviews and advice – a sample of Facebook accounts showed that of the total friends in a network, over a third are signed up to the TripAdvisor app, but less than 10% had written a review, much less than on Gogobot, Foursquare or Trippy. There is space for huge improvement via ease of upload (“postcards”/thumbs up versus full uploads etc.).

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In 2011, Google has shown a keen interest into reviews. It has taken significant steps to combine social graph, search and reviews:  It recently began beta testing a social travel service called Schemer. Schemer combines user-generated content and recommendations from friends with professional content from the likes of Zagat (acquired by Google in Sept 2011), Timeout and IGN among others. Time will tell how successful this venture will be, although it appears to contain the key ingredients for a strong social travel proposition  In December 2011, it acquired Clever Sense, the developer of a mobile application called “Alfred” which delivers personalised recommendations to consumers, tackling the problem of information overload

V ALUE OF SOCIAL CONTE NT FOR REVIEWS

Description Commentary HIGH . Targeted and relevant content from people either in your . Information is trusted to a higher degree social network of those which have a similar social profile . Information is more relevant (e.g. age, gender, background etc...) Reviews . Improved monetisation opportunities From Own Network . Improved customer engagement and loyalty

. Largely trustworthy information from customers . Given the significant differentiation in the travel and users industry, travellers will typically spend considerable time online researching a hotel stay . An effective source of qualified information for – above and beyond the information provided by User-Generated Reviews potential customers to learn from the experiences vendors of prior users – useful for larger ticket items . User-generated information is largely viewed as VALUE USER TO VALUE trustworthy and non-biased

. Product/service related information . Factual but one-sided generated to help the customer make a . Information lacks qualitative detail/analysis purchase decision Non-Independent Information / Information From Vendors

LOW

Source: GP Bullhound

3. Business Trip Planning

Social travel has taken off quickest with business travellers who seek ways of minimising the “wasted” travel time to be more productive. Business travellers are a particularly attractive demographic since they are prepared to pay a premium for convenience and quality. Also, given that they are frequent fliers there are many possible contact points. The most mainstream social travel integration is the collaboration between Tripit and Linkedin in the US. This allows people within a network to see travel plans and use time in airport/on a flight to arrange meetings. Other start-ups in this space such as IMGuest (share hotel location in order to arrange face-to-face meetings when out of town) and Plancast (post your conference attendance plans and those attending the same conference can arrange a meeting), which offer more specific applications on the idea.

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4. Live Recommendations / Information Sharing

Although still in its infancy, the second wave of social travel is far more sophisticated than the first, taking advantage of the improvements in technology (in particular location-based technology) and the adoption of smartphone devices to offer users a live service, fully integrated into social networks. Companies such as Foursquare allow users to read reviews for a particular restaurant en route and then book directly. Once onsite, users can even write and upload a review via the application on their mobile device.

A specific impediment in Europe is the importance of data roaming costs. Given that a large degree of social travel functionality is based on mobile internet usage, costs become significant once a user exits their domestic market. In markets where people prefer to holiday internationally (such as the UK), this creates barriers to adoption of the location- based services on-site/live. Many users will instead wait to use the likes of web-based review sites once they return from their holiday. 5. Collaborative Consumption / Group Buying

Collaborative consumption was a term first coined by Ray Algar in 2007 and has been championed by key figures including Rachel Botsman (Collaboration Fund) and Roo Rogers, co-authors of “What’s Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption”. The term is used to describe an economic model based on sharing, swapping, trading or renting access to products as opposed to ownership, and is particularly relevant for the travel industry, especially the accommodation (e.g. Airbnb, Wimdu, HomeSwapping Company) and car-travel segments (e.g. RelayRides, Whipcar, BlaBla Car).

Collaborative consumption is so powerful because it unlocks value which is trapped by poor utilisation rates and therefore holds a central role in creating opportunities for growth within the online travel sector. Utilisation rates and seasonality have always been a major issue for holiday providers and tour operators, and social travel start-ups within the collaborative consumption space are now finding creative ways of solving this problem.

Unfortunately, as with all disruptive business models, there are two key challenges which must be overcome before this segment may prosper; 1) awareness and 2) trust. The first is an issue which should improve with time as the companies in this space grow their brand and reach within the community. The second risks being a critical barrier to development of this industry. Rachel Botsman, one of the thought-leaders on the topic, understands the importance better than most and frequently highlights that the cornerstone of collaborative consumption is reputation (and therefore trust). In October 2010, Rachel interviewed Casey Fenton, founder of CouchSurfing, a global movement that connects travellers with locals across the world to provide accommodation. The core topic of the interview was how to create trust between strangers via the internet. According to Carey, the key is to implement various features which try to get different angles on trust, allowing users to pick and choose which they want to pay attention to and build their own

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perception. On the CouchSurfing service several features have been implemented including:  Personal profile/personality summary – each person is asked to fill in a set of open-ended personality questions which gives some insight into their character  “Vouching” – members can be recommended, or “vouched” for by other members  Official verification – Identity verification via credit institutions, criminal record bureau etc.  Reputation/reviews – through interaction with the service, users gain references which are a concrete, recorded form of reputation on which they are judged by other users. This results in two things; accountability and group consensus

BlaBlaCar, a peer-to-peer ride share marketplace, is a prime example on how social travel start-ups are approaching the critical topic of trust and reputation. The car-sharing industry itself requires a higher degree of trust than most, due to the nature of the offering – joining a stranger, often alone, in their car. Drivers fill in detailed profiles on themselves and as they complete journeys they receive reviews from their passengers. Prospective passengers can then choose which driver to travel with based on the driver’s personal profile and the reviews they have received. Drivers are incentivised to offer a good service because of the repercussions of not doing so, resulting in the loss of future business. In order to build further trust between the passengers and the drivers, both parties are able to communicate on the platform before committing to a journey in order to iron out any issues.

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Reviews and Collaborative Consumption Combine to Create a

Virtuous Circle

The importance of reputation and trust brings us back to the power of reviews discussed previously. Reviews and recommendations help overcome any trust issues which then drives usage of collaborative consumption. This usage generates new reviews further fuelling the industry. A company who can effectively manage information and trust will reap the rewards of viral user growth, higher transaction volumes and happier customers – the virtuous circle of social travel.

V I R T U O U S C I R C L E O F S O C I A L T RAVEL

Collaborative Consumption

Reputation & Trust Reviews

Source: GP Bullhound

INVESTMENT ACTIVITY

2011 was the year for the further take off of social-related sectors; Facebook (social network), Bigpoint and Zynga (social games), PlentyofFish (social dating), and LivingSocial (social commerce), Linkedin (professional social network) have all shown how keen investors are to invest in social sectors in order to take advantage of the cost- effective viral audience growth that these verticals bring. Although the hype has been in daily deals and social games, the social travel sector is now finally beginning to see significant activity; IPO of HomeAway (June 2011), US$100m placements into Airbnb (July 2011), CouchSurfing US$7.9m private placement and conversion from non-profit to B Corporation (August 2011), TripAdvisor spin-off from Expedia (Dec 2011).

Europe too has seen some strong activity with the $90m investment Wimdu (June 2011), and equity rounds for HouseTrip ($17m in Nov 2011), TrustYou ($5m in Sept 2011) and 9flats.com ($10m in May 2011).

The social travel space has witnessed a flurry of start-up launches, and we believe we are far from a “winner-takes-all” situation, à la Facebook for mainstream friends’ updates. We believe that the importance of independence and the edge provided by technology will allow brands to exist in the space alongside the likes of TripAdvisor, Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin, and develop their own profitable models.

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Nevertheless, the space is definitely becoming crowded again, and we feel the following factors must be considered when selecting the future winners:  Trust − How is trust created? − Who contacts me via this app? − How intrusive is the app on my / my friends’ social display?  Integration − Full integration to the main generalist social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google +) − Local social networks (Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki in , Qzone and Weibo in China) − Other social travel apps (Foursquare, Gogobot) − Depth of integration is critical – friend identification alone is not enough  Features − Playfulness of the site/app/features − Ease of info upload (i.e. write only “postcards”, thumbs up etc.) − Mobile (upload, localisation) − Local (specific offers, place suggestion etc.)  Value add − What does it bring me? . New places to try? . Cheap accommodation and new friends? . Suggestions for my next trip? . Meet my friends whilst traveling? − Quality of data aggregation . Semantic search . Only reviews or stats on friends, quotes from status updates etc.  Network effect − Deep integration into a person’s social graph inevitably raises privacy issues - We will agree to trade our privacy for a few select platforms only, which will combine trust, critical mass of useful content and brand - Expect a consolidation, initially by language pools, after the initial “rush to Oklahoma”

Finally, conditions are finally here for efficient monetisation:  Travel, social and local commerce are now hot spots of digital advertising and etail  All social networks now offer powerful contextual advertising platforms As a result, it is expected that current monetisation issues will sort themselves out for those platforms which attain a critical mass of members (and usage therefore does not constitute a critical factor yet) as influence analysis and metrics will improve significantly. For those succeeding in the space, revenue streams have the potential to become diverse and large.

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SELECTED COMPANY PROFILES

Business description: Founded in 2008, Airbnb operates a marketplace for people to list, discover, and book accommodation around the world. The platform connects those with spare rooms, with those who are seeking a place to stay. Those looking to host, can upload their room to the website, allowing potential guests to browse and read reviews from previous guests before booking. Airbnb raised over $100m in May 2011 from Andreessen Horowitz, DST Global and General Catalyst Partners, and is arguably the largest and most well-known private room rental marketplace in the world.

Business description: Founded in 2006, BlaBlaCar now has over one million drivers and passengers and is growing by over 50,000 users every month. BlablaCar connects drivers with empty seats with people looking for a ride. Drivers rent their passenger seats on trips they are already scheduled to make and passengers purchase a seat. This means the driver and passengers all share the cost of petrol and upkeep and not to mention save the environment and reduce their carbon footprint at the same time.

Business description: Launched in 2010, Gogobot operates a platform which connects individuals with friends to make planning and sharing your travels fun. The platform utilises the user’s social networks, such as Facebook and Linkedin, to source travel reviews. This ensures that the information is trustworthy and relevant to the user.

Business description: Founded in 2009, LoveHomeSwap.com is a homeswapping exchange that uses social media to assist in finding vacation exchanges worldwide. The company has combined a proven demand for homeswapping with social media to create a global reach for a segment of the market that wants to explore living like a local as a holiday travel concept and save on the cost of vacations. Love Home Swap brings to the table a series of new innovations that address the traditional barriers to adoption namely a network with a global reach, trust tools that link you through Facebook to potential swappers and verify identities of those outside your group.

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Business description: Founded in 2010, the Planely application operates under the principle of turning downtime into productive time. A user’s profile is linked to their Linkedin or Twitter accounts. It then allows users to arrange to sit together on a flight, have a meeting at the airport or share transport to a hotel. The social application encourages engagement and can be useful to help reconnect people in a user’s network or make new connections.

Business description: Founded in 2011, Social Flights is a social technology platform that matches travellers with seats on available private aircraft at competitive rates. Social Flights currently has over 10,000 social flyers and 90 private aircraft operators offering hundreds of daily flights throughout the . The platform allows individuals to connect with other members with similar travel intentions to charter a private aircraft. The more seats that are filled in the aircraft, the cheaper the deal becomes.

Business description: Founded in 2000 and spun-off from Expedia in Dec 2011, TripAdvisor is the world's largest holiday review site. TripAdvisor offers user-generated reviews and a wide variety of travel choices and planning features (including Flights search, TripAdvisor Mobile and TripAdvisor Trip Friends) with links to booking tools.

Business description: Founded in 2006, the Tripit platform helps aggregate all travel plans for a typical trip into one location. This may include flight details, hotels, rental cars, restaurant bookings, weather forecasts etc… The Tripit platform will organise all trip details into a master online itinerary, automatically include maps and directions, and even provide the option to book restaurants or other activities. The user then has the option of sharing their travel plans online, with the view of potentially reconnecting with people within ones network whose travel plans overlap.

Business description: Founded in 2010, Tripl is a social travel service enabling interaction with recommended locals and travellers connected to via users’ existing

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network. It allows users to find out who their friends would recommend as a “must meet” local when traveling the world. Tripl is aiming to be part of the distribution model, collecting data from the incumbent travel companies and in return providing them with opportunities to re-target potential travellers with customised and relevant offers.

Business description: Founded in 2011, Trippy is designed to be a so-called “friend sourced” travel solution, tying social networks, like Facebook, into its platform to let users find out which of their friends have been to the destinations they’re considering — whether it be that they’ve checked-in, lived, worked, or studied there. Through one-click recommendations and Facebook-style commenting, Trippy lets friends tell the user what hotels, restaurants, and destinations would be right for them.

Business description: Founded in 2011, Viveunique offers guests a unique living experience, staying in quality city homes, with hotel-style services. The company aims to provide a genuine hotel alternative without those pricey room rates with guests able to stay for from 1 night to several weeks and enjoy a range of In-Home Services.

Business description: Founded in 2002, WAYN operates a travel and lifestyle social networking community. The company’s Website enables its users to keep track of contacts, make new friends, and interact with others, as well as to stay in touch, meet people, and keep friends and family informed of their whereabouts, movements, and activities. WAYN is present in 193 countries and membership has grown from 45,000 users in March 2005 to over 17 million in 2011.

Business description: Founded in 2011, Wimdu is one of the leading private accommodation rental platforms in Europe, with the view of providing an alternative to hotels. The service allows potential guests to search a variety of properties in their chosen destination. Wimdu raised $90m in June 2011 from Kinnevik and Rocket Internet.

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Business description: Founded in 2008, Wipolo develops an offering that allows users to have their trip and profile details in one place and also offers them the power to connect with their friends, family and colleagues in order to exchange trip plans, tips and travel statistics.

Business description: Founded in 2004, Zoover is one of the leading European online holiday review and weather forecast specialists. The company provides user-generated travel reviews in 21 European countries and weather forecasts internationally.

For this research, GP Bullhound has interviewed the following:  WAYN  Love Home Swap  Ex-Lastminute.com executive and now internet entrepreneur  Blablacar  Tripl  Vive Unique

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SELECTED RECENT SECTOR TRANSACTIONS

Private Placements

Date TTV Announced Target Investor (US$m) Commentary Geography

Jan-12 Comuto Accel Partners; ISAI; Cabiedes & Partners 10.0 Online car-sharing platform France

Jan-12 9flats T-Venture; Redpoint; Eventure - Room rental marketplace Germany

Nov-11 HouseTrip Index Ventures; Balderton Capital 17.0 Online platform for the rental of vacation properties Sw itzerland Travel social netw ork providing a platform for trip planning, and Nov-11 Travellution - - France information sharing

Nov-11 CanaryHop - 0.5 Travel social netw ork connecting travellers w ith locals US

Nov-11 Alltrails 500 Startups; 2020 Ventures 0.4 Travel social netw ork for outdoor enthusiasts US

Oct-11 Mafengw o.cn Capital Today 5.0 Online travel community linking travellers and locals in China China ; ; Plaform for sourcing and sharing travel recommendations Oct-11 Gogobot 15.8 US CrunchFund betw een friends and similar travellers Online meeting/matching platform for travelers/lodgers and home Oct-11 World Family Soridec SA 0.7 France stay establishments/host families

Sep-11 TrustYou Credit Agricole PE 5.0 Semantic user-generated review meta-search engine Germany

Aug-11 CouchSurfing Benchmark Capital; Omidyar Netw ork 7.6 Netw ork enabling travellers to find lodging from locals US

Columbia Cap.; InterWest; Menlo; True Daily deals w ebsite in the US, also offering group buying deals Aug-11 BloomSpot 35.0 US Ventures; Harrison Metal; QED Investors on travel experiences

Jul-11 Hopper Atlas Venture L.P.; Brightspark Holdings 8.0 Travel information database w ith natural language search Canada

Platform to connect travelers and locals for travel tips, meetings, Jul-11 Tripping International Quest Venture Partners LLC 1.0 US and homestays w orldw ide interactive MOBILE Jul-11 Connecticut Innovations, Inc. 0.2 Geo-intelligent mobile content management platform for travelers US @dvertising Online global travel netw ork comprising of location-based travel Jun-11 TravelShark DLA Holdings 5.0 Singapore Websites for destinations Investment AB Kinnevik ; Rocket Internet Jun-11 Wimdu 90.0 Room rental marketplace Germany GmbH Jun-11 Cash Flights Media - 3.0 Travel focussed daily deals site in US US

Jun-11 Trip Alertz - 3.7 Travel focussed daily deals site in US US Andreessen Horow itz ; DST Global ; May-11 AirBnB 112.0 Room rental marketplace US General Catalyst Partners Sutter Hill; General Catalyst Partners; PAR Provides online information related to travel (review s sourced May-11 Expert Media 10.5 US Capital Mngt; Felicis Ventures from Tripadvisor) Online travel platform that utilizes social graphs, interests, and May-11 Tripl - 0.3 Sw eden locations May-11 9flats Redpoint Ventures; eVenture Capital 10.0 Room rental marketplace Germany

Apr-11 HouseTrip Index Ventures 2.7 Online platform for the rental of vacation properties Sw itzerland

Mar-11 Tickengo Kima Ventures - Online car-sharing platform US

Mar-11 Hopper Brightspark Holdings 2.1 Search engine for planning travel trips Canada Charles River Ventures; MentorTech Online travel recommendation engine that suggests travel Jan-11 Wanderfly - US Ventures; StartupAngel.net destinations to users based on their budget and interests

Dec-10 Wimdu Rocket Internet GmbH - Room rental marketplace Germany

Dec-10 HouseTrip - - Online platform for the rental of vacation properties Sw itzerland

Greylock Partners ; Sequoia Capital ; SV Nov-10 AirBnB 7.2 Room rental marketplace US Angel ; Youniversity Ventures Platform for sourcing travel planning and location Jul-10 Kukunu Jaina Capital; Kima Ventures; Seedcamp 0.4 UK recommendations ISAI GESTION; Quadriplay Venture; Jun-10 Comuto 1.5 Online car-sharing platform France Investments Search Friends Plaform for sourcing and sharing travel recommendations Jun-10 Gogobot Battery Ventures; Innovation Endeavors 4.0 US betw een friends and similar travellers

GP Bullhound LLP 19

SOCIAL TRAVEL – THE HUMAN TOUCH

M&A Transactions

Date EV Announced Target Buyer (US$m) Commentary Geography

Dec-11 OffAndAw ay Lockerz - Travel site that focusing on travel experiences US

Dec-11 Gow alla Facebook 3.0 Location sharing service and travel guide US

Online review and social media monitoring tool for the hospitality Sep-11 Review Analyst TrustYou - US industry Platform enabling travelers to share their travel profiles and Jul-11 Where I've Been TripAdvisor - US facilitates sharing travel trips and discussion

Apr-11 Second Porch HomeAw ay 3.0 Vacation rental site US

Jan-11 TripIt Concur Technologies 118.0 Online travel itinerary platform w ith social features US

Online travel community facilitating the sharing of travel Nov-10 RealTravel UpTake Netw orks - US experiences

Oct-10 HomeAw ay Google Ventures - Online marketplace for vacation-rental US

Jul-10 nextstop.com Facebook - Online travel recommendations platform US

Operates as a travel guide site, allow ing users to find and May-10 Ruba Google - US share travel destinations and information Online travel search platform w ith user generated review s, May-10 Sprice Travelport - Singapore photos and ratings that connects travelers w ith locals in travel May-10 Localyte The Nile Project - US destinations Online application that collect and organize user-generated Mar-10 TravelPost.com New Travelco - US travel information

Source: Capital IQ

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