AVUXI, a growing startup funded by Telefonica through Wayra in Barcelona, Spain.
So you’ve likely heard of Google’s PageRank yes? What if we told you that there’s a service out there with a similar approach, whose algorithms will rank the social relevance and categorize the popularity of locations worldwide? What if this tool could help in your decision-making by quickly familiarizing you with the social profile of the surrounding area you’re considering travelling to, and what it has to offer?
We’re talking “BigData” analytics here, collecting large data sets to uncover correlations, patterns and trends.
Our startup AVUXI could be the ‘next big thing’ when it comes to online travel booking services! We want to equip users to make quicker – and critically better – decisions when traveling, regarding the best accommodations in any city.
We’re delighted that the tool is already proving to be successful to companies in various fields and specifically, online travel agencies (OTA’s) specializing in accommodation bookings. With the insight we provide, online companies can help their customers instantly understand what the most socially relevant areas are in any given city and location around the world.
Multiple studies have shown that only about 2% of users who visit an online booking site follow through with their reservation, while the other 98% leave. Many move on to surf the web to become better acquainted with the city or area they plan to visit.
If the insights, that are now being provided by AVUXI, were available on the booking sites, customers would be better equipped to make a faster decision whilst remaining on the website.
In a 200 billion dollar industry (see Economist article) growing at approximately 18% each year, AVUXI’s pilot tests have proven to result in an increase of 6.5% in conversion rates and 17% in booking value for the online portals.
We haven’t changed dramatically from our initial designed purpose. All we have done since inception is changed our priorities around. Originally, we wanted to develop an augmented reality app that would allow the user to point their smartphone at any given location, and immediately identify its popularity and relevance. This presented a major challenge because it required an extremely extensive amount of processed data for it to function correctly, so we decided to invert the process.
AVUXI now possesses global data coverage that has allowed us to grow and start monetizing more rapidly. Yet, we still face the challenge of a rapidly growing industry. Our main roadblock? Capacity bandwidth, in terms of processing data quick enough while simultaneously adopting the best technologies, and building the most productive team. We’re working on it!
Within the next two months, we’d like to run several major pilots with businesses to collect more metrics to further develop, improve, and polish our service. In the second quarter of 2015, we’d like to launch a commercially tested, polished product for the online travel agencies as well as a service that would greatly improve business intelligence and strategies. Additionally, AVUXI is working on a product that would similarly serve the connected car industry!
AVUXI has proved to be a growing startup, funded by Telefonica through Wayra in Barcelona, Spain. Our mentors advise that we could offer a layer of distinct information to companies focused on accommodation booking or travel distribution in Telefonica’s portfolio… so there’s another target to hit! We’re keeping busy…
This post was previously published in Telefónica Digital Blog.
