WithLocals brings together local travel experiences with initial SE Asia focus

The latest startup to drop into the tours and activities space is WithLocals, which promises to connect travelers to food, tours and activities in destinations around the world.

The app is the brainchild of founder Willem Maas, who was inspired by his regular travelers – especially around Asia – to create a way for others to connect with local travel experiences.

In addition to Maas, the 11 person team is helmed by Marijn Maas and Mark Mansveld, alongside CTO Ronald Crooy. 

Travelers can use the service to EatWithLocals, TourWithLocals, and ActivitiesWithLocals.

This structure is a clever way to integrate the brand promise throughout the interface, and also allows the company to combine several areas of P2P travel into one: startups offering meals with locals and startups offering P2P tours and activities are rolled into this one common interface.

The Vine video below is a brief overview of the company, followed by a more in-depth Tnooz QA below.

How did you come up with the idea for WithLocals?

Our team members have travelled frequently throughout Asia. During these trips they had some beautiful and authentic experiences with the local people. We would love to make these kind of local experiences possible for a much broader group of travelers and together with that enable local Asian people to earn a sustainable income by doing something they’re passionate about.

Withlocals.com is an experience marketplace that connects Asian locals with travelers through food and experiences. Based on the principles of the sharing economy we are the first to introduce the category of home-dining in Asia. Taste the real local culture through an authentic meal at a local families’ home.

Next to that we offer the categories Tours Withlocals and Activities Withlocals on our marketplace. (Semi) professional tour guides can offer their skills, knowledge and tours directly to travelers on our platform. Directly connecting local people to travelers wasn’t possible in many parts of Asia even for about 2 years ago, because of a low internet penetration. Currently, Asia has the second largest and fastest growing travel economy. Combining these two trends, we see huge potential in launching Withlocals. Our goal is to create 10,000 new locally hosted home dining spots through Asia.

Tell us how you founded the company, why and what made you decide to jump in and create the business.

At the other hand, the idea for Eat Withlocals came up in Sri Lanka during the honeymoon trip of Marijn Maas, co-founder. After he and his wife had dinner day after day in high-end restaurants, they by coincidence experienced a home dinner with local Sri Lankan people. “It was so amazing, listening to each other’s stories, experiencing their way of living while eating the best food of our entire trip. I thought, wouldn’t it be great if all travelers could have an experience like this? We love the sharing economy and wanted to give travelers and locals in Asia the opportunity to connect with one another”.

What are your current funding arrangements?

$500,000 USD by Greenhouse Group, a business accelerator from The Netherlands. With funding secured, we have just launched in beta for a small group of local hosts and travelers. This group will have the advantage of sampling the first experiences with the service and will lay the groundwork to grow the platform. The funding gives us the opportunity to speed up our launch and initial rollout.

What is your estimation of market size?

Asia, which is the second largest and fastest growing travel economy in the world. According to data from emarketer.com, online travel sales are expected to grow nearly 200% in the Asia-Pacific region by 2016.

Please describe the competitive landscape for WithLocals.

We are the first to introduce the Home-dining category across Asia. In this category you have the recent startups Eatwith and Cookening, but until now they have only been active in the US and Europe. We specifically choose Asia.

We believe the extra money local people in (less developed parts of) Asia can earn, can really make a difference in their living standard. And we can focus our marketing activities on the second largest and fastest growing travel economy in the world.

In the Asian tours and activities category traditional travel agencies are our biggest competitors. Looking at online marketplaces you could say Toursbylocals will be our main competitor, they also have high ethical standards and professional guides on board. In contradiction to them we are offering a total local experience for travelers from Home-dining to tours to activities with locals.

What is your strategy for revenue and profitability?

The main goal of our company is to enable other people, who need it more than we do, to make money.

Of course to build a sustainable business, and with that being able to help more people, our company will make profit. We don’t charge the local hosts anything: they can publish their experiences and home dinners for free and risk free on our website. We charge the traveler a fee of 20 percent of the booking price. We expect an average booking value (Eat, Tours, Activities) of around 110 USD.

Describe what your start-up does, what problem it solves (differently to what is already out there) and for whom.

Our team members have travelled frequently throughout Asia. During these trips they had some beautiful and authentic experiences with the local people. We would love to make these kind of local experiences possible for a much broader group of travelers and together with that enable local Asian people to earn a sustainable income by doing something they’re passionate about.

Withlocals is an experience marketplace that connects Asian locals with travelers through food and experiences. Based on the principles of the sharing economy we are the first to introduce the category of home-dining in Asia. Taste the real local culture through an authentic meal at a local families’ home.

Next to that we offer the categories Tours Withlocals and Activities Withlocals on our marketplace. “Semi” professional tour guides can offer their skills, knowledge and tours directly to travelers on our platform. Directly connecting local people to travelers wasn’t possible in many parts of Asia even for about 2 years ago, because of a low internet penetration. Currently, Asia has the second largest and fastest growing travel economy. Combining these two trends, we see huge potential in launching Withlocals. Our goal is to create 10,000 new locally hosted home dining spots through Asia.

Why should people or companies use your startup?

From a local host perspective (supply side):

We believe that every person is good at something. What is greater than being able to make a living out of something you are good at, something you like to do? By starting Withlocals.com we hope to enable local people, especially who need it most, to get a better life by offering their skills and knowledge to travelers.

From a travelers perspective (demand-side):

Travelers who are looking for a unique authentic and truly local experiences instead of the standard “Tourist traps” now have a marketplace where they can find and book these on a safe and simple way.  We are connecting locals and travelers directly through food and experiences. Especially our home-dining category is a total new category in Asia and can enrich travel experiences.

Other than going viral and receiving mountains of positive PR, what is the strategy for raising awareness and getting customers/users?

We strongly believe the success of an online marketplace is all about having traffic.

Many people who’ve had beautiful ideas in the home restaurant and tours category didn’t make it because of the lack of traffic, thus demand.

Being part of a group of 150 online geeks, working for customers like Vodafone, Microsoft and Mars, online marketing is our specialty. So our strategy to raise awareness and getting customers  is definitely not based on positive PR, but consists of a mix of amongst others SEO, targeted social advertising, retargeting (display and RLSA), PPC, leadgen/CRM follow-up.

We already have a bit of traction with over 100K of visitors a month and about 42K of Facebook likes and the numbers are growing every day, without even having launched our platform officially.

How did your initial idea evolve? Were there changes/any pivots along the way? What other options have you considered for the business if the original vision fails?

Our initial idea evolved as mentioned before in question two, part one.

We believe in the principles of “the lean start up”. So we will learn along the way. And during our development stage many changes are already made based on input of hosts and our “fans”. For example, we didn’t expect so many enthusiastic Asian hosts  to register on our website in our Alpha stage. We received  already over 11.000 registrations. Our processes, recourses, and systems we’re not calculated for these kind of numbers, so we had to adjust them really fast.

And yes, we’re sure we will learn from our launch and change things along the way.

Where do you see yourselves in 3 years time, what specific challenges do you hope to have overcome (please refrain from using biggest, best or most awesome in your answer)?

In the short term, during our Beta release, we have to validate and fine tune our business model.

In the medium term, we are aiming to create 10,000 new locally hosted home dining spots through Asia.

The first challenge we see is, as being a marketplace, to keep demand and supply in balance. So not having lots of supply and no demand, or the other way around. That was in our opinion the failure of other marketplace especially in the activity category.

The other challenge we see is to keep up the quality and authenticity of the experiences offered on our marketplace during our expansion phase. Our ambassador network and elaborate review system play an important role in this.

What is wrong with the travel, tourism and hospitality industry that requires another startup to help it out?

First of all we introduce a new category in the tourism and hospitality industry in Asia, home-dining. We believe that this category will be an enrichment for the hospitality industry in Asia and is “here to stay”. It offers local foodies the possibility to meet new people and earn some money. Travelers can have a taste of authentic local culture by joining a dinner at a local families home.

If you look at the Asian tour and activity industry there are currently unnecessary parties in the chain between travelers and local guides. This is not surprising because in many parts of Asia the internet penetration is only recently okay.  In Asia the tourism industry is relatively big and we want to connect the many (semi) professional local guides directly with travelers. Guides will receive a more fair price and travelers will pay a more fair price.

Next to that, our philosophy is “everybody is good at something”, so local Asian people can really use their own skills (from handcraft, to mudwrestling to traditional fishing) to earn money from offering activities to tourists. These activities will if necessary be guided by a tourism professional.