STARTUP STAGE: Postcard Travel promotes responsible luxury tourism

Postcard Travel

Bangalore, India-based Postcard Travel is a global community of storytellers, hoteliers and travel designers who want to make travel a force for good.

Founded in 2020 and launched in September 2022, Postcard's objective is to be the platform of choice for mindful luxury travelers to discover hotels and tours that support the local community.

In early September, Phocuswright published its India Total Market Report, which provides a comprehensive view of India’s travel market, including detailed market sizing and projections, distribution trends, analysis of major travel segments and key developments. Below, PhocusWire dives deeper into Postcard Travel.

What is your 30-second pitch to investors?

Postcard is a storytelling media and travel representation company for luxury hotels and tours that support the local community and promote responsible tourism. We aim to join hands with them to inspire a new generation of mindful travelers through storytelling.

Postcard was conceptualized in 2020 by Amit Jaipuria when he found it difficult to find luxury hotels and tours that supported the local community and were authentic voices for responsible tourism. Through the company website, newsletter and upcoming podcast, we showcase stories from mindful luxury hotels and tours to a global community of travelers and invite them to book with them.

Describe both the business and technology aspects of your startup.

“Eighty-three percent of travelers think sustainable travel is vital, nearly three quarters believe they have to act now to save the planet for future generations, and 61% committed to travel more mindfully.” -Booking.com

As society wakes up to travel in a post-COVID world, people are seeking innovative products that lead them toward more mindful travel and personal transformation. While this is an emerging trend in the travel industry driven by a more mindfully aware and inclusive community of travelers, more needs to be done at a global level to accelerate the process and make it mainstream.

Postcard brings together a global community of mindful luxury hoteliers and travel designers and invites them to showcase local stories. It then promotes them via its website, newsletter and podcast channels to a global community of travelers.

As a membership-driven platform, luxury hotels and travel designers apply to be featured on the Postcard directory. If accepted, the company pays an annual fee to be included within either the Postcard Hotel or Postcard Tour directory and a commission on sales that convert from a Postcard lead. The hotels and tour companies then publish local stories about their people, culture, history, food, nature and wildlife on the Postcard site in an effort to inspire travelers to book a stay or tour with them.

For hotels and tour providers that need help with storytelling, Postcard also offers a global directory of established storytellers they are able to hire for editorial services.

Give us your SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis of the company.

Strengths

• Postcard is well positioned to be a leader in ushering in a new era in mindful travel. Using our brand media channels such as our website, newsletter and podcast, we have the tools needed to showcase our partners to a global community of mindful luxury travelers and a chance to inspire them with stories from different parts of the world.

Weaknesses

• While we are a startup with a big vision, we are still new to the market having launched on Sept. 1, 2022. As such we are in the early stages of promoting our brand to the global market and building awareness among our consumers and suppliers. We partner with like-minded media outlets, industry groups and tourism boards to get the word out about us and support our vision for mindful travel.

Opportunities

• We are a global community of storytellers, hoteliers and travel designers that share a common vision of having travel serve as a force for good. We have partners representing over 15 countries across five continents, and our application list for new partnerships continues to grow. By empowering our partners and helping them succeed, we contribute to helping make an impact in their respective communities.

Threats

• With the countless startups in the travel industry, each claiming to have its own way to service consumers and partners, we can be lost in the crowd. As such, consumer and partner inaction can be a hurdle for us to achieve critical mass and traction. Therefore, we have taken the time to get our messaging right to help us differentiate ourselves from others and position ourselves in the industry for mindful luxury travel.

What are the travel pain points you are trying to alleviate from both the customer and the industry perspective?

It is difficult for mindful travelers to find authentic boutique hotels and tours that support the local community and promote responsible tourism. This is because search platforms are algorithm-driven and the attention is won by those best at SEO and with deep advertising budgets. Social media is also very noisy, and it is a challenge to find companies. Given that boutique hotels and travel designers are SMEs and have relatively limited budgets, they find it difficult to connect with like-minded travelers. Postcard curates the members it brings onboard, ensuring only high-quality and authentic companies are listed in its databases. This makes it useful for travelers to have Postcard as their preferred platform to identify like-minded partners to plan their trips with.

So you’ve got the product, now how will you get lots of customers?

Postcard’s objective is to be the platform of choice for mindful luxury travelers to discover luxury hotels and tours that support the local community and promote responsible tourism. To achieve this the company utilizes different marketing channels to get the word out and build its global community of mindful travelers. 

• Advertising The Postcard Tour and Hotel Directory to drive leads and bookings
• Advertising The Postcard Newsletter and building a global mailing list 
• Advertising The Postcard Podcast and to drive more listeners to subscribe 
• Boosting company posts on its social media channels 
• Advertising The Postcard Blog to drive more subscribers 
• SEO and performance marketing of individual tours, hotels, blog posts and podcasts on social media 
• Partnership with media outlets, industry groups and tourism boards for awareness building  
• Public relations and media exposure for company updates, product launches and key partnership announcements  
• Referral and word-of-mouth marketing  
• Influencer marketing  

Tell us what process you've gone through to establish a genuine need for your company and the size of the addressable market.

Becoming members of industry groups such as the Transformational Travel Council has enabled us to network with and listen to the challenges faced by companies whose values and visions we aligned with. We sought to build a product that would help them succeed. After hundreds of Zoom calls and one-on-one interviews, we were able to identify pain paints, uncover opportunities, design the product and establish the business model for Postcard.  

How and when will you make money?

Postcard has multiple channels for revenue generation. As the company grows, it will activate its various monetization strategies, such as:  

• Listing fees from hotels and travel designers
• Commissions on transactions
• Sponsored ads on our newsletter and podcast channels

What are the backgrounds and previous achievements of the founding team?

As a serial entrepreneur for the last 22 years, Amit Jaipuria has started multiple companies across industries such as consumer tech, retail, agri tech, fine art and travel. He is passionate about creating and empowering communities to bring about change to the status quo. He has also authored multiple patents on social media platforms and is a Media Herald and Ally Partner at the Transformational Travel Council.

How have you addressed diversity and inclusion within your business?

Being community driven, we represent partners who are local hoteliers and travel designers from over 15 countries, and our vision is to have local representation from all countries around the world. We invite them to showcase their products using stories featuring their people and lands. Showcasing their stories helps us amplify their message and connect them with potential partners and donors who can support them in their initiatives.

What’s been the most difficult part of founding the business so far?

Getting the product design and messaging in place and building a community of suppliers and consumers.

Generally, travel startups face a fairly tough time making an impact – so why are you going to be one of lucky ones?

We are a community-centric business built on the foundation of having travel serve as a force for good. With every booking we do via Postcard, we help our partners make a direct impact at the local level. We also share their vision and have committed 10% of all revenues towards conservation and community empowerment with an intent to grow this percentage as we scale.

A year from now, what state do you think your startup will be in?

We will be a global representation company with partners and clients from over 100 countries. We will be cash-flow positive and will have made an impact in local communities the world over by connecting our partners with like-minded travelers.  

What is your endgame? (Going public, acquisition, growing and staying private, etc)

We believe in social enterprise. We plan to remain a privately held company with a culture of empathy and inclusiveness and give back to build a more sustainable world.