Interview: Javier Salvador, CEO Famliday

Famliday is a Spanish startup with a digital booking platform which responds to the need and priorities of the families with children when seeking family-oriented accommodations, leisure establishments and restaurants, including 100% family friendly own search filters and an accurate selection of choices.

The official launch date for the project is July 2021 and It will be initially focused on the Spanish market, developing an international expansion plan aimed at new markets in the next year.

Tell us a bit about you, what you do, your company and how you came to be part of TGX Network

We had the opportunity to be part of TGX network through the Amadeus Startup Launchpad program, which we have recently been selected as one of the international travel-tech projects the company is boosting. The truth is that it has been great to start working with TGX, as it makes our technical development work easier and faster and brings us the chance to connect and work with strategic partners in the tourism distribution sector.

I am convinced that the travel industry is going to recover its previous levels earlier than expected. You can feel in the streets how everyone really needs to travel again and, as soon as trust is fully re-established, we will assist an incredible explosion in the business.

From our perspective, this is both a challenge and an opportunity. The totally exceptional situation experienced in the last 18 months has led to important changes in the touristic distribution business, with a new market scenario and different “rules of the game”, opening doors to new players like us with a clear belief in technological and business innovation.

Probably, the most important point is that we have listened carefully to our users as a first step. Our project began when we detected a simple insight: The vast majority of parents with children have problems finding the best option when they are planning their holidays or deciding where to spend a day out with their family, as other existing platforms do not meet the specific needs of this target. Hence, we needed to understand in depth which was the customer journey of a family when travelling and thus transfer this knowledge to our project. Furthermore, we are developing a business model of high segmentation and specialization, which is a market trend with some other successful examples creating value to specific targets. In fact, we want to go further, and our horizon is to be open to new market niches and develop new functionalities in our product to offer customized experiences to our users at the destination using data and AI.

In my humble opinion I suggest TeamX and the organization to keep supporting new projects and startups with its utmost. It is hard to start and grow a new business, but it is always worth trying. So, every little help means a world to us, specially to those who are in early stages. All the agents in the sector need each other and the travel market needs us all to strike a balance and find new routes to innovation.

The first aspect concerns the real pain from your customer and your client which you need to relieve with your solution or product. If you clearly know this, you will have already gone a long way. Then, that solution must generate a differential value proposition with its own and well-defined competitive advantages. In essence, It is important to ask yourself why someone should choose my solution over other existing options, particularly in this extremely competitive market.

However, in my opinion, the most important and indispensable aspect for success in any project in the travel-technology world is how well you can create defensive barriers for your idea, once you could hit the nail on the head. This is frequently overlooked and there are many cases of really good ideas that lost its competitive advantage as soon as their competitors -mainly, giant companies- follow in their footsteps. This is precisely what we want to avoid, and we are working on it already.