Globalista launched its online information service earlier this year, providing carefully edited destination information for the luxury travel market. As well as paid-for content, Globalista’s Travel Journal blog features a mix of travel news and mini-guides.
We asked founder Olivia Koerfer about the launch and future plans for Globalista.
What motivated you to set up Globalista?
About 4 years ago I was living in Barcelona and I set up a small travel consultancy business, catering to the up-market client. There was plenty on offer in Barcelona for the package tourist, hen and stag night crowd, but little for the more discerning traveller. Together with a Catalan partner, we specialized in providing insider access. We would organize for clients to visit private homes of historical importance, museums after closing hours with curators and, of course, we would recommend the best hotels and the restaurants of the moment. John Gordon, my current business partner, was a client of mine and we began talking about how great it would be to have all this insider information accessible on the web, not just for Barcelona, but for a whole range of destinations.
How long did it take you to get from initial idea to launch?
It took about 2 years for the initial idea to get off the ground. Then a year of full time work to get to launch, so about 3 years total.
How did you perceive the initial reactions to the website when you launched?
Initial reaction has been great. We have produced some really fantastic content and our users are full of praise which is very encouraging.
What would you identify as the greatest challenges so far, and were these challenges you expected?
People expect online content to be free, so having a subscription based website has been difficult. Being a new brand it has been very hard to build up trust. Users come to our site and cannot really view much content unless they subscribe so getting past that barrier has been and continues to be a real challenge. We are trying to change that with our blog, that offers a lot of varied content accessible to all.
If you launched today, is there anything you would do differently?
Yes definitely! I think we relied too much on individual subscribers and did not investigate any other revenue streams. So we never really thought of incorporating booking engines, or licensing content. I also would have allocated a much larger budget to marketing!
There have been quite a few travel planning websites launched this year, why do you think that is?
I think people are seeing the potential of the web as not only a source of information but also a travel planning tool. It enables users to combine many things – calendar, destination info, flight info – all in one space.
How do you perceive Globalista as different from these other sources of travel information?
The fundamental problem with all user generated content travel sites is that it is very difficult to verify who the content is coming from. Even if you can get past this problem how do you know that that person’s taste is similar to your and therefore is relevant to you? That goes for other purely editorial travel information sites too. It is the relevance of the content that we are tackling. By targeting a a very specific niche, we are more confident that we can deliver relevant information. Websites that try and cover all sorts of information for all sorts of people are never going to produce quality because users can never be sure that the information is relevant to them. There is too much information out there, we sift through it all and only bring relevant information to our targeted audience. This information is also constantly cross checked and updated. Hence the subscription fee – we can guarantee relevance and therefore quality
What is your view of the current state of travel media?
The state of the travel media is very healthy as you can see from the weekly travel press round-up that appears on our blog! The online travel sphere has also booming, with new sites appearing on a weekly basis, all aiming to fill a different need.
Which travel writers do you admire?
Dervla Murphy
Rory Stewart
Bill Bryson
How would you like to see Globalista developing in the future?
Our plan is very much for Globalista.co.uk to incorporate a bookings service in the near future, improving the simplicity of our service to clients. The idea would be that clients could come to Globalista for all their travel needs. On this point, we already have an exclusive travel concierge service, Ask Globalista, which we are currently working to develop.
We would like to enhance the User Generated Content side of things on the Globalista website – this will include tips and feedback (we already receive quite lot of feedback from our users which encorporate directly into the reports) and a user to user forum is something that we are certainly looking to develop. This could also include member forums where people post details/information on private villa rentals etc.
I think an important USP for Globalista is also the breadth of content that we supply (200 travel reports online now, and counting) and it will continue to be important that Globalista produces quality content for as many destinations across the globe that is humanely possible – we would aim to have 500 travel reports and upwards at some point in the not too distant future.
