March 9th, 2010
The free train to Geneva
Zoombu’s mission is to help you find the best route to your destination and make travelling easier. We love it when our team comes across hidden information to help you on your travels, like this gem from Geneva Airport.
Did you know that if you want to travel by train from Geneva Airport to Geneva, you can do so for free? Simply pick up a special ticket in the the machine in the baggage collection area at the Arrival level and use public transport in Geneva free for a period of 80 minutes. The Unireso ticket is offered by Geneva International Airport and the train to Geneva takes just 6 minutes. So if you need make a connection, or you have some time to kill at the airport, why not make use of this offer.
Zoombu search results include connections like this one in the end-to-end routes we find, to help you find the best way to your destination.
As if this wasn’t enough; if Geneva is your destination and you are staying at a hotel, a youth hostel or a campsite, you can pick up the “Geneva Transport Card” that allows you to use public transport in Geneva free of charge during your stay. More information is available from Geneva Tourism. Brilliant! Come on London, how about matching that?!
- Posted by Rachel
Tags: Geneva, Getting to Geneva, Public Transport
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March 2nd, 2010
We were delighted to be invited to take part in the Google Travel Summit this year, held at their swanky offices in Zurich. The purpose of the event was to spark discussion around “the opportunity for the travel industry in the next 5-10 years”. Participants included 15 travel related start-ups (including TV Trip, Tripsay, Tourist Way, Memonic, eZSearch and Skyscanner), 5 VCs (Creata Ventures, Partech, Brains to Ventures, DJF Esprit and Howzat Media) and lots of Googlers to stir the debate.
The day kicked off with pitches and product demos from each company, followed by a VC panel, Google product demos and break-out sessions for business and technical debates.
Nelson Mattos, Google’s Vice President of Engineering, EMEA, gave a great introduction to the parameters of effective search: relevance, user experience, speed and comprehensiveness. As we’ve been thinking about the growth of Zoombu travel search, we’ve focussed efforts on these domains too, so we were pleased to see the commonality.
Data was a common theme throughout, both as an enabler of innovation, and as one of the biggest challenges faced by travel start-ups. Getting hold of data is time-consuming and difficult due to the wide rank of formats and lack of availability. However, those with data are able to do interesting and useful things in serving up information to users and ultimately helping them to make purchases. One of our current efforts is to gather information on local ’shuttle buses’, where timetables and prices may or may not be available online, are usually difficult to locate and are certainly not in a consistent format. It’s a painful process, but having access to this data means we can recommend great value end-to-end routes to our users.
Fancy a nap? Googlers in their sleep room.
The Googlers were keen to see what they could do to help innovation by sharing their data and services; an offer welcomed by all involved. They also wanted to show the start-ups how to do office culture properly and gave us a warm welcome to their home. When you have a slide into the staff canteen, Ben and Jerry’s fridges on every floor and a ’sleep room’ complete with tropical fish and jungle noises for post-lunch snoozes, you know you’ve made it.
- Posted by Rachel
Tags: Google, Google Travel Summit, Travel Search, Travel start-ups
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February 12th, 2010
Image by Dru
This week we welcome a guest post from a new Zoombu Ski user:
Whilst skiing is the sport that dominates the Alps during Winter, another, more remote sport, is also in full swing: ice climbing. This form of climbing involves the climber donning ice-axes and crampons, before they begin their upward ascent of a waterfall. Despite looking extremely precarious, it is not in fact as dangerous as some might think; the climber secures their ropes to ice-screws meaning that any fall is not usually serious, and the lower altitude (compared to climbing to the summit of an Alpine Peak) means the seriousness of an ascent is reduced.
In January I headed over to Chamonix to indulge in the sport of ice climbing. On the way out I was rather haphazard with my travel; I picked my flights far too late, didn’t plan my transfers, turned up at Geneva airport and spent a good while there figuring out how to get to Chamonix. I found a lift and got to Chamonix in one piece, although if I had to guarantee my arrival time, I would not recommend this approach. On the way back I didn’t leave things to chance – a missed flight would be disastrous. Fortunately Zoombu’s ski search was available so I used it to see what they could offer. Using the site I found out that Holiday Taxis would pick me up from the flat at 6:45am with no dramas, which indeed is what they did (and after a week swinging around on the ice, the last thing I needed was to be running around the town in the early hours looking for a lift!).
I’m off to Cham again in the summer and will definitely be using Zoombu. If only they had launched their site before I had booked the flight as well!
- Posted by Geoff
Tags: French Alps, Ice climbing, Journey planner, Transfers
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February 4th, 2010
Photo taken by Shay Haas
For those of you who are keen followers of Zoombu, you will have seen that this week has been a busy one for our team. We have just opened a mini version of Zoombu to the public, in the form of Zoombu Ski.
This side product has the functionality of the main Zoombu service, but a subset of the coverage. With Zoombu Ski you can find the best end-to-end way to travel from your home in the UK to a resort in the French Alps. We search a range of modes of transport and will pick out the cheapest, fastest or greenest end-to-end route for you.
With Zoombu Ski we want to find out what you the users like, don’t like and want to see improved about Zoombu. We are very keen for your feedback on the product and we listen to all of it. We meticulously log, debate and prioritise all of the points raised and this directly influences the product development plan.
Search speed is something that many of you have raised as important, and we are working on this as we speak. Shortly the Zoombu search will be noticeably faster. We’re also just about to add coverage to a bunch more ski resorts so look out for this in the next few days.
For those skiers amongst you, if you haven’t had your powder fix for the season yet, or you could be tempted to take another trip, then run a Zoombu search to find the best way to get to the slopes. There are some bargains to be had: we found a search result for door-to-door transport from Oxford to Chamonix over a long weekend in February for £100 including a flight out of Luton.
Happy planning!
- Posted by Rachel
Tags: French Alps, Ski Planning, Zoombu Ski
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December 15th, 2009
We are delighted to announce completion of an investment by the Saïd Business School Venture Fund in Zoombu. We were selected as a winner of the SBS Venture Fund final in May 2009, which was judged by the fund’s benefactors, Sir Philip Green and David Bonderman. After a rigorous due diligence and evaluation process, the Venture Fund Committee, which consists of MBA students and fellows of the Saïd Business School, approved Zoombu for investment.
The Saïd Business School Venture Fund originated in 2006 when the two benefactors collectively donated £1 million to fund winning early stage businesses of members and alumni of the Saïd Business School and the University of Oxford’s Entrepreneurs Society. Alistair and I both studied Engineering Science at Oxford University, and more recently Alistair obtained his DPhil from Oxford, so we qualified to applyto the Fund. We are excited by the opportunities the funding presents us to expand the team and accelerate development of our service, which is currently in private beta.
- Posted by Rachel
Tags: funding, Said Business School Venture Fund
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December 4th, 2009
Image by Alain Bachellier
Approximately 30% of web traffic related to travel is channelled through Google. Travel is the most searched for category on Google. So it’s not surprising then that the giants of search are especially keen to help travel companies (and ultimately their clients) to figure out how to navigate their way successfully through the economic crisis. [This crisis, according to EuroMonitor, has affected the travel industry worse than the aftermath of September 11th]
On Tuesday 1st December Google held ‘Travel Think 09′ where a couple of hundred industry leaders in the travel sector were invited for a day with Google and others to share insights and ideas for the future of travel.
I was proud to be invited to speak on their panel entitled “Innovate to Capture Consumers”, alongside Marko Balabanovic of Lastminute, Paul Kemp-Robertson of Contagious Magazine and Fergus Boyd of Virgin Atlantic. Richard Seymour (of Channel Four “Better by Design” fame) chaired the panel which drew on some key themes about current innovation in travel:
- Consumers no longer want to have to visit lots of separate sites to fulfill a search for travel – they want to have relevant results served up to them from a single place [Enter Zoombu; helping people to search "from A to B" instead of having to look for a flight, Eurostar, train, bus, or driving directions in many different places and piece search results together by hand]
- Mobile and location based services are becoming ever more important to travellers who are armed with iphones and the like. Augmented reality apps are becoming popular to assist travellers on the move
- Established brands need to engage with new and innovative concepts and companies in order to keep up with consumers and ultimately to survive
- Power and knowledge is now in the hands of the consumer and not the brand, thanks to the wealth of real-time, social and search apps
Other speakers included Google’s UK MD Matt Brittin, Tamer Tamar, President of eBookers and Danny Barrasso, Head of eCommerce at Hilton and a fascinating talk by Ben Schott (writer of Schott’s Almanac). The event was held in the Royal Geographical Society, which is arguably the most significant institute of travel and exploration in the UK having supported such famous names as Livingstone, Stanley, Scott, Shackleton, Hunt and Hillary.
Thanks to Google for inviting me along.
- Posted by Rachel
Tags: Google Travel Think
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November 12th, 2009
We’re delighted to post some travel tips from our MBA intern Sharad Piplani. Sharad has travelled widely within the Middle East and India and has recently started living in Madrid. He shares his recent experiences as a first-timer with Ryanair…
This week, I took my first Ryanair flight. I have long wanted to experience flying with the notorious airline first hand and I finally got my chance today on a flight to Rome.
I type this post on the flight, cramped up on a seat that refuses to incline. That said, I feel fortunate to be sitting at all, having heard the rumours that Ryanair is challenging regulators to allow standing tickets; just another O’Leary innovation for the low cost flying model!
Here are a few of my personal first-timer tips for surviving Ryanair:
- While booking your Ryanair flight, use a Visa Electron to pay or be prepared to pay another 5 EUR per person per one way flight at a minimum with any other card.
- Beware of the Ryanair voucher. The voucher is designed to book flights in one go and cannot be used again later as it expires
- Ryanair now charges EUR 40 if you forget to print your boarding pass, a charge that could be more than the cost of your flight!
- You are now allowed just 10 Kilos of cabin luggage on the flight. This is just one bag inclusive of your laptop and other electronic goods. You pay for any bag you check in.
- If you think that your bag is slightly over-sized and will not fit the baggage slot at the boarding gate, then be prepared to layer up with extra clothing or discard a few items. My friend had a hard-bound bag with wheels and the bag would not fit in. The lady at the counter would not budge either and insisted on a fee despite the bag weighing less than 10 kilos, which is the new allowed limit on Ryanair flights. Tip: Tilt the bag with the wheels up and the bag slides right in.
- The life vest being used during safety demonstration may look extremely weathered! I managed to locate my life vest above me after five minutes of feeling the underside of my seat.
- If you’re a smoker and you’re desperate for your fix whilst on board, believe it or not, Ryanair now sell smokeless cigarettes (as well as a range of average drinks and food for top end prices). Ten cigarettes with real nicotine cost 6 EUR.
- Finally, don’t forget to join the group fun and clap when your flight lands!
- Posted by Sharad
We are keen travellers here at Zoombu and are building a bank of real accounts and tips on travelling via a whole range of transport options in order to prevent unexpected wallet dents and to help you on your way.
Tags: Ryanair
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October 16th, 2009
Photo by Joshua Davis
We wanted to share an update on our product development, especially for those of you who have expressed an interest in trying out Zoombu.
Our private beta currently serves routes within the UK and from the UK to France and three weeks ago we gave a lot more people access to trial the service. We are pleased to say that we have now doubled our test user base. The response from those of you who have tried out the beta has been brilliant, and we are very grateful for all the valuable feedback we have had so far.
For those of you who we have not yet given invitations, we know you are there waiting and thank you for your patience. We will be issuing more invitations in a few weeks, but in the mean time we are knuckling down to address the feedback we’ve been given.
On another note, it’s been an exciting week for the Zoombu team as we have a new team member! John joins us full time after working in games development and then as chief developer for Seedcamp and we’re delighted to welcome him to the fold.
- Posted by Rachel
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September 30th, 2009
The Zoombu team was proud to be selected as a Travel Trade Gazette Big Idea finalist last week and given complimentary tickets to enjoy the glitz and glamour of the TTG Annual Awards ceremony. Over a thousand travel folk dressed in black tie and bling and attended the exclusive ceremony held in the upmarket Grosvenor Park Hotel in Mayfair. Good job the tickets were free as our bootstrapped start-up budgets wouldn’t have got close to covering this luxury!
The whole evening was quite spectactular as dancers from everybody’s Saturday favourite ‘Strictly’ performed for the crowd before thirty awards were presented to travel companies ranging from cruise liners to car hire operators. Thanks to the TTG team for organizing the competition and hosting us on the night and to the judges Oliver Brendon, Paul Stayner, Jane Dyson and Chris Photi for their time. It was wonderful to meet the other travel start-up finalists and we would like to congratulate camping ninja on winning the seed funding and wish them the best of luck with their exciting new venture!
- Posted by Rachel
TTG travel industry awards - more bling that Paris Hilton (apparently)
Tags: Travel Trade Gazette
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September 9th, 2009
Image by Noël Zia Lee under the creative commons license
If you’re a sporty type and used to taking your favourite sports equipment away with you on holiday, it’s time to think of new ways of travelling to your destination. Flying within Europe may no longer be the best option. This week Ryanair announced it is increasing its already high fees for baggage. From 1st October the airline will charge £15 for the first 15kg bag and £35 for the second £15kg bag if checked-in online, whereas leaving bag check-in until the airport will cost you £30 for the first bag and a massive £70 for the second bag. And make sure you don’t go overweight as each additional kilogram will cost you a whopping £15. Explicit carriage of ‘sports equipment’ (such as a bike or pair of skis) is charged at £30 – 40 per item.
This follows the move a couple of months ago as every sportsperson’s favourite airline British Airways fell out of favour with its fans. BA announced significant changes to its sporting equipment policy meaning that from 7th October 2009 sports equipment is no longer considered additional to the checked in baggage limit. You can carry just 23kg of sports equipment or otherwise ‘for free’ and each additional bag is charged at £30 (if you travel economy class you have a 1 bag limit) and if you go over the 23kg limit you’ll be charged £30 to increase the limit to 32kg. BA used to by sympathetic to sports fans but now flying with skis or a bike as well as a check-in bag starts to get pricey.
Easyjet have not announced changes but still charge a one-off variable fee of around £16 for up to 20kg of checked baggage and £9 per kilogram thereafter (up to 50kg total and 32kg per single item). To travel with specific sports equipment, for which the same weight limits apply, will cost you £18.50 – £26 per item depending on whether you check it in online or at the airport.
If you are used to flying with your favourite set of clubs, carbon-fibre racing bike or designer skis then you might want to think again. Maybe taking the train could be a better option. Eurostar allows you to take 2 items of baggage in addition to hand luggage and has no weight restrictions, so long as each item is less than 85cm at it’s longest length. If it’s bigger and under 30kg in weight then you’re required to register the equipment for £15, or £20 for a bike. And of course with a drive + ferry or Eurotunnel option, the sporting world is your oyster.
Zoombu lets you compare the end-to-end cost of a route involving a flight, train or ferry to Europe. Where we have information about ‘hidden fees’ on any transport component, we will pass the details on to you, so you can find the best route for your passion.
- Posted by Rachel
Tags: compare fees, European flights, Eurostar
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