IN-DEPTH: Matthieu Heslouin, Cofounder & CEO, Wipolo strongly believes that travel is mobile, social and fun and every new service should be benchmarked with these three dimensions. Heslouin says his company’s latest app Wipolo has evolved post its Facebook integration, enabling it to develop the gaming aspect of travel.

Published: 06 Jul 2011

IN-DEPTH: Matthieu Heslouin, Cofounder & CEO, Wipolo strongly believes that travel is mobile, social and fun and every new service should be benchmarked with these three dimensions. Heslouin says his company’s latest app Wipolo has evolved post its Facebook integration, enabling it to develop the gaming aspect of travel.

By Ritesh Gupta

Wipolo, a web and mobile platform, relies on its unique email parsing technology, social network integration and mobile integration for its offering.

Wipolo, an offering that allows users to have their trip and profile details at one place and also offers them the power to connect with their friends, family and colleagues in order to exchange trip plans, tips and travel statistics, is targeting one million users by 2012. The business model is based on providing users with personalised travel and local deals by leveraging their travel profile and behaviour.

Wipolo has been developed by Actimos, a French startup created in October 2008 in Paris.

The offering has evolved over the years.

“Our offering strongly evolved with the Facebook integration,” Matthieu Heslouin, Cofounder & CEO, Wipolo told EyeforTravel’s Ritesh Gupta.

According to the company, till few months ago, Wipolo was a super productivity tool to have trips in one place. It was a 1-to-1 tool, very useful but not social and fun.

“Coupling Facebook with our unique data repository enables us to develop the gaming aspect of travel,” shared Heslouin.

Matthieu Heslouin, Cofounder & CEO, Wipolo spoke to EyeforTravel’s Ritesh Gupta about the company’s expansion plans and lots more. Excerpts:

How do you assess the strength of your offering at this juncture? How do you think it is setting a new benchmark in the travel industry?

Matthieu Heslouin:

Wipolo platform is strong because we started with the parsing engine to collect trip plan details and then we added mobile and social dimension to our service leveraging the data we are collecting. We built the database structure then put our efforts on the front-end. Second point Wipolo has a unique advantage as Wipolo is starting from the traveller and not from the booking engine. So we may centralise all your trip plans and not part of them to build your travel profile.

Talking about a new benchmark in the industry is tricky as things are moving very fast. Nevertheless I strongly believe that travel is mobile, social and fun and every new service should be benchmarked with those three dimensions.

What did you take into consideration while coming up with such offering? How has your approach evolved since the time you have been working on this offering?

Matthieu Heslouin:

Since the beginning our ground vision is to focus on travellers' experience. If you start by the traveller you think differently than if you start by a company corporate vision.

Let’s take an example: the explosion of mobile applications. If you think corporate you think I need to develop my airline, my hotel or my train application. It you now sit on traveller's side you realise that you have 20 different travel applications on your mobile to cover your trip plans, you feel the pain. There must be a central point to then rebound to vertical applications or services.

Our offering strongly evolved with the Facebook integration. Few months ago Wipolo was a super productivity tool to have my trips in one place. It was a 1-to-1 tool, very useful but not social and fun. Now my trips are connected to my friends and I am connected to my friends' trips, my family's trips or my colleagues' trips. I can compare my passport and my stats and "play" with them. Coupling Facebook with our unique data repository enables us to develop the gaming aspect of travel. We have great project on this part.

It is considered that travel personalisation is still in its infancy. What do you make of such viewpoint? Can you provide an insight into initiatives taken by your company for creating more personalised experience via Wipolo?

Matthieu Heslouin:

This is the heart of our business model. We want to build the Travel graph to be able to match personalised offers with travellers’ profile. Not staring from the offers but starting from the traveller profile and search the best local and travel deals. Once again our unique capability to centralise booking details gives us a strong competitive edge vs. incumbents.

So far BI and CRMs tool are really underused by travel companies for the reason that they have big legacy systems and that it is very expansive to migrate those or get easy results. On top of that it is very difficult for airlines companies or hotel companies to really know their customers because of indirect channels. Traveller profile is split between IT systems. That’s why we believe there is a great opportunity for large travel companies to partner with Wipolo. We bring our BI and CRM capabilities and they bring their unique volume deals capacities. Imagine how powerful it can be.

What is the focus of your offering at this stage – be it for trip planning to booking to in-market and finally post travel stage?

Matthieu Heslouin:

We believe that travel booking is a cycle. Wipolo is consolidating bookings then we may consider Wipolo as a post-booking tool. It is true and false.

I am travelling to Paris tomorrow and have sent my booking details to Wipolo. Wipolo is clearly a post-booking tool. But in the same time I need to book my next trip to London now. Wipolo may become a pre-booking tool then.

Indeed we will focus on local and travel deals depending on the user activity. If you have booked only plane tickets or train tickets we may propose to book your local hotel or rent a car. Then we may propose to book your next flight for your next trip or push travel deals that match your favorite destinations.

How do you foresee the combination of mobility and getting advice from friends growing?

Matthieu Heslouin:

Interesting point. Getting advices from friends is a leading trend in the market not only for travel. Still data roaming is a big problem to make it an easy experience especially while traveling abroad. We believe that getting advices is much more efficient of a pre trip use on the web. Then you should be able to save your tips on your application and have them available offline.

Can you explain how does Wipolo plan to make it easier for its users to find the most relevant and social content quickly and share their experiences with their friends?

Matthieu Heslouin:

Wipolo will not produce any local content. Who else than your friends can you trust to prepare your trips? Facebook is a great engine to enable to share comments and tips very simply and that's why we have developed on Facebook APIs. On top of Facebook we have also developed private messaging system between users to exchange on a 1-to-1 basis.

We also would be happy to work with companies like TripAdvisor or Gogobot to integrate additional social contents on destinations as we are currently doing with twitter to gather real time tweets on destination.

Wipolo is already available on five main mobile platforms iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone 7 and Samsung Bada in English and French worldwide. It is highlighted that understanding how customers behave when using mobile devices is a major challenge. Overall, from a travel company perspective, how do you think the features of such devices impact customer experience?

Matthieu Heslouin:

Tell me which mobile you have and I tell you what kind of traveller you are. Based on this we have developed a specific design for every device. Our iPhone and Android applications are much more social than our blackberry application which is more focus on travel tools. We have chosen to develop native applications so we don't have experience with web application. Native applications enable us to offer offline use of Wipolo, which is key for the trip itinerary management. Our travellers need to have access to their trip plans everywhere even though there is not network or Wi-Fi available.

Also what everybody knows is that the experience on mobile must be very simple and clear because of the size of the screen and the quality of network. Actions must be very limited to avoid application freeze or navigation complexity. We have a clear roadmap on our next features but we can't share them yet.

Tablets must also be considered and are offering great opportunities for website especially with HTML5 capabilities. I have seen more and more travellers with their iPad during travel at the airport or in the train.

As smartphone adoption grows, consumers, according to a recent study by tealeaf, expect a faultless experience across all online channels, including mobile, with 75 percent agreeing there is no reason why a mobile transaction can’t be completed on the first try. What do you make of such expectations?

Matthieu Heslouin:

I agree. See Voyages Sncf or Accor. They have demonstrated that mobile transaction can be a success.Booking must be very simple and quick. It is very powerful for last minute booking. I have already used both.On Wipolo we are well positioned to simplify booking on mobile as we may use the travel graph. For example we just launched a travel assistance booking feature with Mondial Assistance. It enables travellers to book assistance for their trip in 1 click before payment. This is a great innovation.

What are your expansions plans and for targets this year?

Matthieu Heslouin:

Our main target is succeeding our social turnover. We are looking for hundreds of thousands of travellers using Wipolo and we are working on 2 major distribution agreements of Wipolo worldwide with two leading travel companies. To grow faster we want also to close a 2M Euros funds raise this year.