Evelling is a social networking website that is geared toward travelers. This site will enable users to pitch their vacation ideas by creating a group page to solicit fellow travelers to form a community that will help collectively finance the group’s goals. Evelling is not limited to the leisure travel category; it includes sporting events, holiday events, volunteer/relief work, and other specific areas of interest. Users will have an opportunity browse through trip groups and request an opportunity join the one’s that interest them. Group creators will select members for the trips based on their Evelling profiles. Evelling will bring like-minded individuals together to put their plans (no matter how ambitious) into action, creating an unparalleled and truly unique experience. COMPETITION AND GAP FULFILLMENT
Most existing travel websites, create value for their audience by providing resources and services at competitive prices. Websites like Travelocity, Expedia, Hotwire, Kayak etc. advertise deals for airlines, hotels, rental cars and other tourism related services. They are especially useful for booking last minute trips at the best rates. Forbes rated these travel websites as part of the top 13, according to aesthetic appeal, user friendliness, and usefulness. Not only do they supply tickets, but they are beginning to offer trip planning and insurance services. They are evolving services, which can be accessed conveniently from home or office and are rapidly eliminating the need for travel agents. In fact, travel agencies could become an obsolete concept, as easy-to-use travel web sites make online booking user friendly, and highly intuitive. As more of these travel sites crop up, each is seeking it’s own niche. Some use unique pricing strategies while others claim to be a “one stop shop” allowing the customer to see all possible travel options on one site. Priceline.com was the first to incorporate a bidding strategy. The consumer places a “bid” for a hotel or service and they notified the consumer if the “bid” had been accepted. A mystery element to the hotel selection was a hinderance to the Priceline customer. The actual hotel was not revealed until the “deal” was booked, often to the customer’s dismay. Kayak.com claims to offer comparison shopping for “hundreds” of other travel sites. Hotels.com seems by their name to be uniquely expert at hotel booking, but their offerings are similar to the other travel sites, including air fares and rental car packages. A frequent complaint of online travel sites is their lack of personalization. As they continue to improve and differentiate their product, many online sites have tackled this problem by varied means. Some have added a star system along with guest testimonials. Still a lack of personal interaction remains a key element of gap fulfillment for travel web sites.

STRATEGY

The main objective is to incorporate functionality and add as much value to the user experience as possible. Evelling is a standalone social networking site. However, it is ideal for users to to navigate away from the website after they found their groups and they are ready to start booking. With kickstarter funding, Evelling will include a built in booking service. Group bookings can derive large discounts, but achieving this would require the implementation of a negotiation framework and establishing relationships with travel data brokers. We will have to incorporate reservation infrastructure so that we can leverage the travel savings component of group bookings. When this is achieved, we have the challenge of tapping into the market shares of other social media platforms, and convincing people to change platforms, which will be no easy task. Before this part of the website is launched, Evelling must gain a following as a standalone social media component. During the launch stages, it will be presented as a prestigious dedicated group-travel platform, and then will make the transition to offering users access to travel agency platforms when groups are finalized. Even though this kind of functionality would complicate our technical overhead, it would greatly enhance the user experience.

TARGET MARKET

Generating consumer interest online is integral to Evelling’s strategy. Unique content is the driving force that determines the audience it will attract. This website will mostly target (but is certainly not limited to) young people in their twenties who are passionate and hungry for excitement, travel, new experiences, and networking with people around the world. Marketing efforts will be aimed at young people. College students are more inclined to travel and are encouraged to gain global awareness through first hand experiences. We will target the “Influencers”, the “Activists” and the “Trendsetters”. These Alpha users will pull other users into their sphere of influence. They will leverage other social media by sharing and ‘liking’ Evelling on their social media accounts, creating more word of mouth advertising. The resources and opportunities provided on Evelling are aligned with the needs of our target audience. Additionally, Evelling will elevate its profile by creating user launch events that are targeted specifically to our demographic that demonstrate the concept.
Evelling will create value by connecting people and giving users complete control over their itineraries, as well as choosing participants. Consumers will be able to create and customize their options instead of only being able to select what is available to them on a travel/tour website. There is a gap in the market for a service that brings strangers together for the purpose of travelling and financing individual trip ideas. Evelling addresses the human needs of self actualization and belonging on Maslow’s hierarchy. There are social platforms that deal with recruiting employees and learning about people we know in our immediate social circles. At this time there is no widely known website that offers what Evelling does, which is an A to Z experience starting with finding travel companions to booking accommodations. Anyone can book transportation and boarding, but finding people to commit to a trip can be even more challenging. This is where Evelling fulfills its purpose. TACTICS

To promote our webpage, we began by using the method of word of mouth. We verbally informed friends, family and other students on campus to visit the site. Our target audience is college students, so we branched out to friends at other universities and asked friends to ask friends.
Our most effective promotions took place through social networking because this is the most commonly used communication tool that college students use. Another benefit is that it makes it easier for creators of Evelling to reach a wider audience. The First social media tool was a twitter account based off of our webpage under the name Evelling Adventures. This was a great way to give users a direct link to our webpage. Next, a Facebook page was made under the name Evelling to reach another audience who might not have a twitter account and would like to see past posts and pictures. Facebook is also a very common and easy way to share links to webpages. By using the share feature of facebook our page was shown to thousands of potential users where it generated likes. By using different social media tools we saw a large increase in the amount of people viewing and using our webpage.
Another main focus of our social connection was through Instagram (image sharing) to reach another area of the market. Group members posted on their Instagram accounts asking people to take a look at Evelling, along with the link in the biography section. Other promotion efforts included speaking to family and friends and receiving their support in sharing our content. As a result of networking with friends and family, people from all over the world visited our website. And this is just the beginning.

Action

After some research on what age groups leisure travel the most, we discovered that people ages 18-24 are the second highest group of travelers. The Market Research portion for our website consisted of five interviews of college students here at the university. Each student gave very detailed answers as to what they liked and disliked about the website. One of the main things I was looking for in these interviews was whether or not the people understood our objectives and felt engaged when they visited our web site. We got some very positive feedback and some key information which helped guide us on how we can improve our site.
The interviewee’s comments mostly involved the need to have more posts, enough to fill all of the different categories that Evelling endeavors to offer. When trying to go to a particular interest there were no comments or events so by adding some comments we were able to make the site seem more realistic. We also had some spelling and grammar errors that were fixed after carefully reading through the entire website. A calendar of upcoming events was also added to the website because of comments that were made about the home page being plain or boring.
Google Analytics Statistics * Returning visitors: 46.3% * New visitors: 53.7% * Page views: 1,085 * Unique Pageviews: 410 * Sessions: 121 * 10 From United Kingdom * Average time spent on each page: 1:22 mins
Sessions from cities * Fredericksburg: 40 * New York City: 25 * Northern Virginia: 26
Sources
* Direct: 66% * Kashefmajid.com: 28% * UMW Domains: 3.3%

The information collected using Google Analytics can be used to determine whether or not we would have enough interest in this kind of website to keep it running. We have concluded from our high number of page views that this website could definitely work. Also, from the demographics we have realized that we can reach easily reach people from all over the world. This is key to our strategy because it offers our members a worldwide scope.
MONITIZATION
The website would create revenue through ads. Areas along the side panel could be available for ads, and profile data could be used for advertisers to custom tailor their ads to their target group. These ads could be filtered by geographic data, sex, age, travel preferences, etc. Any company targeting our members could advertise with a bid based model, based on clicks or performance. Popular tourist areas wishing to promote themselves could set up ads, similarly to Google Adwords or Facebook.com, but our Advertising program would not be limited to travel vendors. Additionally we would have premium locations for special advertising, similar to the AOL.com model. We would negotiate special rates for these locations along with special deals, similar to GroupOn.com. We may also ask them to offer discounts to our users in return for this premium space. The types of companies we would seek out are, but not limited to hotels, airlines/other transportation services, vacation sites, and ticketing sites such as Ticketmaster or Razorgator, beverage companies, sports equipment and automobile manufacturers. Our second source of income would be through bookings, a negotiated percentage of each booking placed through our site. With enough advertisement and this small booking percentage, we would generate enough revenue to keep our website up, informing and inspiring travelers.
Control

Evelling’s performance will be evaluated relative to consistency with objectives. If our marketing efforts do not yield the desired results from our target audience, we will make amendments to our strategy and ask our users to review their experience on the website. Group members will test the service themselves; creating profiles, joining groups, and searching for weak points in the process. Search engine optimization and using Google Analytics data strategically would be additional forms of monitoring and improving Evelling’s performance. Performance reports should happen frequently rather than periodically in order to provide our users with value and reliability, as well as staying ahead of our competition.