About

OneTourismo is a rapidly growing company in the travel technology field. The company was born as a result of the merging between experienced travel industry professionals and talented software engineers. OneTourismo has manufactured an innovative reservation system for Travel Agents and Tour Operators. At this moment more than 85 travel agencies have chosen the technology solutions and expertise of OneTourismo. The company uses leading edge technology in order to provide innovative, complete and tailor-made solutions for travel agencies, tour operators, travel wholesalers, online travel agents, Destination Management Companie's and other travel professionals. Understanding the growing demand for incoming tourism in Greece, OneTourismo has created unique features, such is a BackOffice System for manual adding Hotels, actvities and transfer services in Greece, unifying hotels from about 40 suppliers and systems in Grece, as well as offering a Distribution Network to resell those products on a Global basis.

Solution & Product

The Travel Agency wοrk routine is complicated and time consuming and to a certain extend still offline. So even to reply to an enquiry or make a booking, many steps and systems are required from the Agent to learn and use. Our company has developed an "one stop shop" online reservation system for Travel Agents. The system offers the following services: Flights, Hotels, Holiday Packages, Transfers, Activities, Rent a Car. On the system we have developed real time connectivitiy with around 50 diferent systems and suppliers in order to provide instant availability, prices and online bookings to any of them. The system also offers connectivity to the accounting software as well as generating quotations by simply clicking on the products needed and sending them directly to the customer's email for review. So the employees of Travel Agencies can very easily and through a single interface find the right products, send quotations, make bookings and automatically send the invoices through their accounting system.. The Travel Agents can also add the System on their website and sell directly to end customers. They can also provide personalised access to other Agents or Corporate Companies so that they can make B2B bookings.

Innovation & Scalability

Onetourismo provides a Central and Web based Reservation System. This means that the user can log in to the platform through any device, no local installation or infrastructure and no IT personnel is required from customer's side. Maintenance and updates on the platform are made centrally, so only one main version to maintain. Regarding Technologies used we combine cutting edge ones. The NodeJS is the main runtime environment because it offers high performance asynchronous request handling. A MongoDB for data with no relationships between them, and MySQL as a relation database. When it comes to geospatial data, PostrgreSQL is our choice. The values that diferentiates us from the competition, is that the system while Central, it does provides a range of choices in terms of both the Front End (design and flow), as well as back end functionalities. So while all our customers get the same vesion of the product, they can easily customize to their own needs. We do provide a relatively smooth and quick SetUp for every new customer. There is no need to involve developers on the Setup procedure, nor install any infrastructure. It just takes a support agent to do so, but at the same time it can be easily adapted to the needs of every new customer, regardless of the sector of activity of the Agency or its country of origin. So new customers coming on board can be easily come on board and get trained by few support agents.

Traction & achievements

In only 3 years time, Onetourismo has managed to provide to the Travel Agency sector a technological product that makes their daily routine much easier and quicker. After only 3 1/2 years we have achieved to reach the largest portfolio of customers in the Greek Market. More than 85 customers are currently using our services, which is almost twice as much as the customers of our closest competitors in Greece. Important milestones are the first hotel bookings that were generated on the system in March 2018. Another milestone is the sigining of our first customer abroad and more specifically in Australia, Greece and Mediterannean Travel Center. In May 2020 our company signed an agreement with Manessis Travel, the biggest Travel Agency in Greece, employing more than 100 people. Although Travel Agency industry is largely affected by Covid19 and bookings coming from Travel Agencies have decreased by around 65% in the past 2 years, our overall turnover in July and August only was higher than the turnover in the whole of 2019. This was a result of the platform offering more products and services to the users, as well as a costant growth on the number of Customers getting the platform.

Team & Why Us

Our company is consisted of two shareholders, George Bountounis as CEO and software house Codefactory. George spent 4 years working as an E-Sales Manager for a hotel chain in France. Then 4 years in a boutique Travel Agency in Greece, where he realised the problems in the routine of a Travel Agency. He then assigned to Codefactory the manufacturing of the platform and asked them to join forces with him. Nikolaos Tsagkas Vice President of Codefactory is also the company's CTO. He is the architect of the platform and a great mentor for the developers. Nikolaos Papafotis is the Lead Developer. he has been constantly working with us since the beginning. George Skepetzis our new IT addition. After his first months of training he is now engaged in demanding projects. Dafni Georgiou is the support supervisor. She has previously been working for Hotels, making her ideal to train and solve our customers' issues. Our target is the sector of Travel Agents. There are about 6,000 Agencies in Greece only. The platform can also be used by any agency in the world, but a realistic goal is to target TAs in Europe and Mediterannean. Amongst the 85 active customers using our system, around 10 are based outside Greece (Cyprus, Romania, Serbia, Italy, Israel and Australia). We have also received bookings from agencies or end customers from about 35 countries. Technically our goal is to continue developing a unique tool for our cutomers and for expand our sales network in other countries.

Funding Needs

We are looking for funds in order to reach a more International Clientele. This would require technical and commercial actions. From technical side, we would need to hire 2 new developers in order to develop extra services (Insurance, Flights etc), new features (Dynamic packages, layout, functionality), as well connections with more suppliers and systems. Also, get extra server space. From commercial side we would need to hire an experienced and a junior Sales Manager, make Google Adwords or Linkedin campaigns, exhibit in international Trade Fairs (WTM, ITB Berlin, WTM Arabia, Travel Tech London etc), possibly develop Sales and Support Offices also outside Greece and of course dedicate an increased amount for travel expenses. By applying the above plan of actions, we would be able to target new and larger Travel Corporations, increase the costs for getting our Software in order to be closer to the competition’s Average costs. We would also notice a significant increase of income from booking fees, since more and more agents would be using the system hence making bookings and paying booking fees.