In October last year, I announced a new Finland startup founded by Juha Huttunen. Today, EuropeanStartups.com readers first have a chance to hear about Vailoma, the company that have recently got funded by Finland’s Venture Capital VeraVenture and Finland’s leading web design agency Valve.
Juha, can you please explain EuropeanStartups.com readers what Vailoma is?
Vailoma is a service for active travelers who are looking for answers to questions like “I love hiking and seeing historical sights. What would be the best places to go for me?” or “What do other people with similar interests say about a particular destination?”
How many destinations does Vailoma offer so far?
Vailoma offers over 260 000 destinations, cities, sights, mountain peaks – you name it – all located on a map for easy discovery. For all these places Vailoma collects travel content all around the internet. This adds up to a service where you can find the most interesting travel destinations for yourself, based on your travel profile.
How does it work?
Vailoma applies collaborative filtering technology similar to e.g. Amazon's. Whenever the user rates a destination or writes a tip about one, that user’s profile is adjusted accordingly. This way Vailoma can provide the most interesting content from its extremely extensive database. So Vailoma offers not just tons of data but also automated tools to find the relevant information quickly. Users can collect the places and sights they are interested in and create their own personal trips and related guides with ease. No more surfing around or using word or excel to store all the data collected from the web.
How is Vailoma different from other numerous travel services on the web?
As key differentiators there are four factors:
1. Many travel sites rely only on their own content. In addition to own content, Vailoma offers categorized quality content from several sources reducing the need to surf around looking for content.
As a traveler you search for information and other travelers’ opinions on destinations you are interested in. What has been missing is a service that combines multiple different resources into a single and simple to use service.
2. Travel sites today offer the same content to all visitors. Vailoma personalizes its content according to the user’s profile.
A retired couple is likely interested in different things in a vacation than a group of college students so they shouldn’t see the same content. Based on the user’s profile Vailoma shows the most relevant information on each destination.
3. Most sites concentrate on the largest cities and a few key sights and/or hotels within it. Vailoma offers a far more detailed selection of interesting information.
Currently Vailoma has over 260 000 destinations, sights, etc in its database, all geotagged to a map. These destinations are not only large cities like New York or London but also thousands of smaller places and sights, such as the greatest surf beach in Tenerife, Canary Islands or the train station where to hop on the Atherton jungle train in Cairns, Australia. It’s very much different from advice such as “when in Paris, see the Eiffel tower” that is generally found on travel sites..
4. Most sites are text based pages cluttered with flickering advertisements and pop-ups. Vailoma relies on a simple and intuitive map based user interface.
Destinations are shown on a map so that the user can see where all the interesting places are related to each other. Vailoma prioritizes information that is most likely of relevance to the user and does not just show the whole of web and expect the users to sort it out themselves.
Vailoma extends beta invitations throuhg EuropeanStartups.com. If you are interested in becoming a tester, please send email to info [at] vailoma.com with the subject EuropeanStartups.com.
