Pinoy entrepreneurs create online marketplace for travel activities
THE ENTREPRENEURS behind an app focused on offering travel activities in the Philippines is hoping to expand in six other countries in the next two years.
“[Bliimo] is an app developed in the Philippines meant to provide a seamless flow of adventures and experiences for the customers and seamless flow of business for merchants,” Ronn Mitchell Esguerra, founder and CEO of Bliimo, told the media during its launch on Jan. 27 in Subic, Zambales.
“The initial idea [was to create and app] to book tour guides and we realized it was complicated, so we thought why not go a little more upward. So we came up with the idea of what people need — itinerary planning,” he explained.
Bliimo is envisioned as a marketplace selling travel activities such as renting a boat for islandhopping, booking a massage, and getting a helicopter ride from Mactan to Bohol.
According to its Web site, Bliimo aims to “reduce the hassle of planning trips by not only providing you with a fully integrated platform to book your adventures but also by letting you unbundle your itinerary and customize it the way you want it.”
It currently offers 186 travel activities on the app, but its creators expect the number to go up to around 400 within the month.
The name Bliimo — according to James Leonard Cruz, cofounder and chief revenue officer — refers to an expression his friends say whenever they attempt and/or succeed in something awesome.
Mr. Esguerra said Bliimo also hopes to give small businesses a chance to compete, as many boat men or small diving shop owners typically don’t have budgets for marketing and promotion.
This, he explained, is also the reason why the company charges low commission rates and currently has no sign- up fees, though merchants must undergo a multi-step verification system.
“We only get 10% and even as low as 4% as the price increases. We also don’t meddle in the pricing of the activities,” said Mr. Cruz.
Experience-focused apps appear to be the future of travel as Hong Kong-based travel experience app Klook managed to raise a total of $96 million which the company means to use to fund its global expansion efforts to the US and Europe.
Klook also recorded five million bookings in 2016. In 2017, it averaged one million bookings per month, 70% of which were made using mobile devices, according to a TechCrunch article published on Oct. 25, 2017.
Bliimo is said to offer a more flexible itinerary feature, a technology the founders developed with P10 million, which were privately funded.
“With us, it’s a simple drag and drop and you can customize your itinerary (and the number of people joining) by the hour,” Mr. Esguerra said.
“Our main market our millennials, these people are always on the go, always busy and that’s what we’re trying to solve,” said Mr. Cruz.
Aside from simple itinerary planning, Bliimo also functions as a social media app where users, once they book their passes, can tag their friends on the app and send them their passes.
The app does not have a recommendations feature, instead replacing it with a feature that shows people who have tried the activity.
“What we have are people you may know that have already tried these experiences. So the credibility of the merchant can be increased by virtue of human connection,” Mr. Esguerra told BusinessWorld, adding reviews for experiences will also be from people who have been verified to have booked and gone on the activity.
In the spirit of flexibility, payment methods are varied: from online banking to Bayad Centers to PayPal. Payments also undergo a three-day holding period before being turned over to the merchants in case of disputes.
“As long as it accepts money, we’re there. If you look in the app, we even accept payment in Bitcoins,” said Jesus Paolo Montero, Bliimo cofounder and chief technology officer.
Mr. Esguerra said while the company is not limiting itself to the Philippines, they plan on getting more merchants and experiences within the country before expanding into other markets in two years.