Do you love to travel? I do and have had the opportunity to set foot on four of the seven continents and will touch all seven before I leave this planet. Caroline Allison has a similar passion for travel, so much that she created Viscape to help people connect and become better educated about the places they are going.
Viscape is social marketplace for travelers, owners, and real estate professionals to come together to network, exchange ideas, conduct business, meet and organize trips around vacation properties and second homes.
I recently had a chance to interview her and discuss her lessons learned as a small business owner and the state of the travel industry. Here is a transcript of part one of our two-part interview:
Steve: You have worked to help build many technology startups. What was the motivation to start Viscape?
Caroline: My own frustration with travel planning, especially when finding a vacation rental. I found that for each day I'd go on vacation, I would spend an equivalent day on the internet to plan the trip. It got so bad that I stopped planning completely. I just didn't have the time to surf 100+ different sites (no joke) to piece together a trip. I just knew that a site had to exist where people could help each other.
Steve: You definitely are passionate about traveling and seeing the world. When you looked at the travel web site landscape and decided to start Viscape, what was most frustrating to you?
Caroline: Just my own frustration with trip planning. I can't stand trip planning. I go on these travel sites and they are geared towards a business transaction. Many travel sites out there are boring, in my opinion. They have horrible photo-shopped pictures and marketing writing that is cheesy and unauthentic. Our site is about real people sharing their experiences by reviewing destinations and vacation homes. You can connect with the very people who have been to these destinations and get tips and additional information to help plan. This helps optimize your trip especially if you have friends coming.
Steve: How do you see the online travel marketplace now? What trends do you see evolving over the next 12-24 months?
Caroline: I think there will be more sites that allow people to connect with each other and share information. People will be more adventurous because they will learn about new places and want to recreate others' experiences. More social travel sites will emerge to serve this.
Steve: When you created Viscape, was the motivation to bring social networking into the site something you wanted from the beginning or did the trends social media motivate this?
Caroline: Personal experience. Every time I planned a trip, I just wanted to talk to someone and get the "cliff notes" of what was good. After all, we only get 2 weeks off per year. It better be good!
Plus, I wanted a way to plan a trip with friends that I could feel good about, and not be embarrassed that I didn't read enough reviews or talk to the right people. Check on my bio on the Viscape site, which tells the story (under "About us").
Steve: How exactly does the site work for buyers?
Caroline: From my research, there are no sites that exist that focus exclusively on vacation property sales. There are several national sites, but they do not cater to the vacation property niche like we do.
On our site, search is super simple. All of the homes show up on a map, which is extremely helpful because you see if the house is on the beach, by the beach, or inland. All of this has a big impact on price. It saves you tons of time!
Steve: Does the site allow sellers to market or is this a strictly third party tool? Can they communicate with people looking at renting their properties?
Caroline: Yes. We have an open philosophy, meaning that we enable owners and real estate professionals to list their properties on our site. We know that we will not serve a complete marketplace if we only serve owners or only serve real estate professionals. So as a result, we do not charge listers to list their properties on our site. Many realtors do not have an advertising budget - so "free" is very compelling. Did I mention that it is FREE to list a vacation property on Viscape for rent, sale or swap? Many people don't believe me when I say this.
When people join our community, they have many tools available to them to communicate with each other and communicate with others in destinations where they are considering either renting or buying. This is very powerful for renters, buyers, and sellers to confidently to transact with each other.
Next Time: In Part 2 of this interview we talk about entrepreneurship in general, failing to succeed and a cool new program that Viscape is launching that you can participate in! Be on the look out for the next part of the interview for details.
