Target Market and Need
Surfers spend their free time in search of perfect, uncrowded waves. One of the best ways to score great surf is to travel to remote destinations around the world. However, most trips are planned far in advance with the hopes it won’t be flat upon arrival, and with the proliferation of the internet it is getting more difficult to find uncrowded lineups.
The Product
Pairing the existing advanced forecasting features with personalized surf travel offers will allow users to have a single destination to explore and book ensuring great waves.
Business Case
The travel industry is estimated to see ~$1.6 Trillion in bookings for 2018 and is continuing to see strong growth from developed and emerging markets1. Consumers are focusing more on creating experiences they can share over social media over purchasing new products and gadgets. Surf travel is following the same trends and is seeing larger “premium” sector demand for tailored experiences.
Providing personalized surf travel suggestions for the next swell would be offered as a feature for premium subscribers. This feature will also create an additional revenue stream with income generated on partner bookings and additional customized add-ons.
Competitive Advantage
The current available surf related travel products focus on advanced planning trips around the seasons deemed most consistent for surfing. They cannot guarantee the quality of surf or weather for the dates booked.
This product will be able to pair forecasted swell information with specific travel offers and customized surf guides to improve the probability of scoring great surf. This product will also be able to generate demand for unfilled occupancy during the off-season and highlight new areas to explore (e.g. Cuba, China, Ireland, Wavepools).
Risks
The technical risk for this product is medium as the technology for this product currently exists in the marketplace. The most challenging part will be the requirement to create new partnerships with established travel partners (airlines, car rental, hotels, etc.) To further differentiate from the large travel companies, additional partnerships will need to be developed with smaller surf focused travel companies (surf camps, boat operators, local surf guides, boutique hotels, etc.).
There is an additional risk that the surf forecast could be inaccurate which would lead to a poor user travel experience. This could be offset by offering a forecast probability and “money back guarantee” based off this percentage. This would lead to less revenue, but increase the user’s confidence when booking.