Make-my-Dream.com

Team: Al-Hassan Hleileh | Elika Mahdavi | Manh Hung Le | Meghbartma Gautam

Mentors: Ethan Kurzweil | Alan Chiu

What’s the big idea?

• How do we revolutionize travel in a hyper competitive space (conc on EM) •Why’s booking such a pain – so many websites, too many deals, not sure, unreliable•What do consumers want: great offers, as well as rich and meaningful experiences, and social connection in travel. Through technology and a focus on the untapped middle east market, we are launching a game changing technology •Makemydream.com, from booking your flights, hotels, flashsales, group-discounts, to sharing you experiences through instant messaging, photo sharing and uploading, as well as memory slides when you are done, which can be shared publicly or privately•Make my dream – will realize user dreams and etch them in history

Market Sizing

$ 51.25 Billion

$ 10.26-12.81 Billion

The Middle East experienced the world’s highestregional average annual tourism growth rate;9.6% YOY; 60.3m arrivals, with $850 averagespend (2010) latest number I could find. The totalsize of the market is $51.255billion.

However online bookings are currently a fraction of that with estimates of 20-25% of travel occurring online, whichcomes to US$10.26-$12.81billion.

Endogenous shocks in SR willcurtail growth this year, but positive LR outlook

Archetypes

2) Young and Married: Asal + Hubby* Grew up in Toronto, parents live in Middle East* Went to school in Chicago* Travels ~1 every 4 months (Asia, South America, Europe)* Travels with her husband and blogs about her experiences

1) Young and Single:

Elmira Shans* Grew up in Dubai * Currently in London for graduate school)* Travels ~ 1 every 3 months (Europe, Middle East, North America)* Travels in groups with friends-publicizes travel

HotelsAirlinesEvents (Festivals)Car rentalsPromotion companiesDeal listingsState TourismTravel agentsConventions (CES)Business Schools (Study groups)

Product DevA/B testingRelationship with hotels; airlines; car rentalsSourcing dealsAcquisition, retain customers

Market understandingBest in class productRelationship with partnersHuman Capital

Lowest priceBest inventoryConvenientExperiential UISocial ValidationCreate a CommunityMultiple optionsBest Actionable dealsRelevant locations

Trusted relationships Successful partnershipsBrand awareness/ identificationPilotsCross pollinationEvents (Parties!)

Young and the affluentHigh Disposable incomes Willing to explore

Young and singleDivergent origins, same destinationsSocial media savvy

Young couplesTrendsetting behavior

Young familiesBest education for kidsCultural experience Trendy destinations

Web and mailAdvertisingSocial MediaWord of MouthReferralsCustomer call centersMagazines

Human CapitalProduct DevelopmentAdvertising costsMaintaining relationshipsRefunds

Percentage of booking costsPercentage of hotel/package (s)Advertising revenuesEvent of the monthExclusive partnership with events

Sales Pipeline

We currently have a sales pipeline of over$160,000, which we hope to capture entirelyonce our technology is launched.

Our pass / fail signal is if we fail to continue organically (without agency push), for people tobook online.

Product Development Plan

Ground Rules

We are working with Dummy dataWe are working such that the happy path use case goes through

This means that we are not stopping and throwing catch blocks to catch errorsOur mantra is iterate, iterate, iterateSo we need to get something out, this need not be perfectWe are working with LEAN model – this means extreme agile and not waterfallI encourage us to have 2 channels of thought

1. What can be implemented right away2. What can be a vision for the long term

This needs to be done fast and done right (approximately)We will learn and work on this togetherAnd MOST importantly Communicate, Communicate, Communicate

Over e-mail, calls. We will sync everyday, even if it is for 15 mins

Redirected from anywhere

Travel alert on app

• Email signup• F connect

• Search for hotels• Search for deals• Filters applicable• Search for reviews• Search for advents

(adventure deals)

• Home page • A blurb on what we do• A 10 second pitch

• Reviews by the community

• 1st person reviews• Reliable and brief• Pitfalls and Pleasures (Avoid) (Go-to)

• Highlighted deals • Timing of deals

• Adventure trips• Custom itinerary

• Group deals • Go where your

friends go!

Feature Set

• Book the deal• Cash on delivery (initially)

• Share experience (f/flickr)• Photos and updates (w00t)

• Share the deal (f/t)• Send the itinerary

to friends

• Reviews and recommendations

Feature SetThis is not a wireframe. It is a list of the features in priority order

Normal Database/search

Adventure events sorted by location and interestFlash sales and packagesSearch for tickets/destinations

Social Sharing

Share Deals on FacebookCommunity ReviewsGroup It*

Adventure events/events

These are specific events and adventure deals. Store them in a database. The fields are1. ID2. Type – Adventure or Events3. Country4. Price5. Rating6. Review (free text storage)

These should be sortable by all the fields. Use filters to enable sorting.Sorting is a priority 2 feature

GROUP IT COMMUNITY TALK TO US

SEARCH FLASH SALES ADVENTURE EVENTS

TICKER

WHAT PEOPLE ARE DOING ON THE SITE

Flash SalesThese are specific sales and package deals. A variety of things can prompt this. Some of them include – introduction of a new airline, special last minute deals in hotels, going out of business deals. As always, Store them in a database. The fields are1. ID2. Type – Stand alone or package deals – Stand alone means only one deal on

airplanes/hotels. Package includes two or more (rental car deals for example)3. Country4. Price5. Rating6. Review (free text storage)7. Keep a blurb to denote what sort of a deal this is. Plane for airplane, Hotel for hotel deals

and a gift pack for package deals

These should be sortable by all the fields. Use filters to enable sorting.Sorting is a priority 2 feature

Search

Standard search architecture for booking flights. The code is open source and has been shared with you in another mail. All we need to do is to implement that and make it look pretty.

Share deals on FB

This is pretty standard. So after booking, you should be able to share deals on FB/twitter and within the site as well. All that needs to be done is to implement a share button snippet from FB

Currently the payment system is a dummy system. We will not hook into anything yet except store contact details of the person making the bookings.

Community reviews

Any community member can write reviews on any of our deals/sales/destinations. There is plenty of code lying around on the internet for this. Just take and tweak

This will later be refined to a person only being able to write reviews for a place that this person has visited. (Priority 2)

Group It

This is our key differentiator. So I want us to implement this perfectly.

Concept – If I book a deal, my friend also wants to book that deal. I will share that deal and he will book the same deal. Implementation –The deal that a person books should be shared. Another community member will look at that deal and book the same deal. If the deal is different in any feature (not the same airline, not the same hotel) then the person will be notified. Even if there is a difference in the prices of the bookings, the person must be notified. If there is no difference, the same booking must go through. So there must be a way to store the operations of a booking. Since, at this moment this involves just hotels and airlines, this operation will only involve storing these 2 data points in the database.

Since we are working with Dummy Data, the complex use cases that must have occurred to all of you will not be surfacing.

I cannot stress enough how this is central to our business idea. Implement this as a Priority 1 feature