amavido is an exciting new travel experience that combines the innovation of an online platform with the personal human approach of a travel agency. We create individual and tailor-made travel offers out of the beaten path, with authentic experiences in undiscovered areas. This is done through the interaction of an intelligent IT system and the expertise of our travel experts supported by the local knowledge of our hosts. Thus we guarantee competent and personal service with scalability of the offering.

Travellers are longing for authentic destinations and special experiences far away from mass tourism. Due to the flood of information on the Internet, however, it is difficult to find the right offer. In addition: how do you choose a place that you don’t know exists? On amavido, users answer a short interactive questionnaire online and then receive up to three offers by e-mail. These are exactly tailored to their needs and are presented with an innovative visual storytelling approach. The offer, we call it Travelstory, consists of a characteristic accommodation and authentic activities as well as a lot of additional information about the destination. The user can then book everything with just one click.

Established providers either focus on commercial tourist destinations and tend to neglect tailor-made offers. This opens up an interesting market gap for amavido. Our goal is to become a first mover and market leader in the sector of tailor-made individual vacations in unknown small and medium-sized eco friendly destinations and thus create a positive impact for these regions.

amavido starts with a focus on two pilot markets, which are the two markets with the greatest potential for this type of tourism: Germany as a demand country and Italy as a supply country. The founder team is at home in both countries and has gathered international experience in both markets. In addition, the team is supported by three business angels who, in addition to their financial investment, contribute their longtime experience.

The status quo is a highly innovative marketable product and a proof of concept on both sides of the platform. At the beginning of 2019 the professional market entry is planned as well as the extension of the portfolio on both sides of the offer. To achieve this amavido  has started the crowd investing campaign on fundernation, for which we have already obtained 150.000 € investment through the Business Angel Co-Invest Program. 

Our life becomes faster and faster. Often it feels as if we lost contact with ourselves in our hectic everyday life. More and more people are longing for authenticity and meaningfulness again.
On the other hand, there are many undiscovered areas where exactly that can be found. We at amavido know the potential that is just waiting to be discovered in these areas. Beautiful places where you can find a slower rhythm and a special lifestyle.

We believe in creating individual and extraordinary travel experiences by making the invisible visible. We want to find and activate undiscovered and unused potentials all over the world, and thus create a better and more humane tourism industry together. With amavido we support people who live in small villages and rural areas to discover and activate the potentials there. In this way we give them the opportunity to share and preserve the uniqueness of their culture, places and traditions. We want to see the world coming closer by building a bridge between travellers with these special and precious people and places.

The travel trend in the coming years will clearly move towards the amavido offer. The big cities resemble each other more and more and offer always less incentives to people to take a time out from their hectic lives. In addition, people are increasingly seeking human contact, they no longer want to live in large anonymous hotels, but in smaller family-run accommodations, where human contact is the main focus. Therefore, a large growth in the area of individual tourism in small and medium-sized destinations is to be expected. First it will increase in the western countries, then the emerging countries will follow. There are currently no major players in this market. This is the chance for amavido to learn in a focused way and then to reposition and lead the sector with its experience as a first mover and market leader.

Our goal with amavido is to create a global community of travellers. We also use this crowd investing campaign to promote the amavido Discovery Club. In this Club selected members get exclusive travel offers at special conditions from new and established amavido hosts. In this way we ensure the quality of new offers and strengthen the worldwide amavido community at the same time.

Become a part of amavido! Let's make tourism more human again and make the invisible visible!

The international team consists of the three founders and further experts in all key fields, who are working on the realization of amavido's vision from different European countries. All of them have a lot of experience in their fields of competence, so that they complement each other perfectly in their cooperation. The background of the three founders fits exactly to the strategy of the two pilot markets Germany and Italy. Dr. Tomassini has worked for a long time in international and Italian unconventional tourism and has been able to build up a large network over the years. The two founders and siblings Mrs Marie-Janet Calzone and Mr Dominik Calzone have an Italian background, but grew up in Germany. Thus they know both realities very well. At the same time, the internationality of the team is already laying the foundation for scaling into other countries. The team also includes three international business angels who, in addition to their financial investment, actively support amavido with many years of experience, know-how and their network in various areas.

 

Innovation in amavido consists of two elements, the "market innovation" and the "product innovation".

The "market innovation" is based on the change of perspective. Normally a customer knows to which destination she wants to travel and searches online for a suitable accommodation. The opposite is the case with amavido. The customer does not know yet, where the journey should take them and discovers with amavido, new undiscovered and suitable to its needs destinations and activities. Additional information is aggregated and digitalized by amavido in advance and then presented in a customer-specific way.

All this happens in a unique way, through amavido's "product innovation". Due to our innovative product the customer receives a travel offer tailored to their profile in a unique visual storytelling manner, our "Travelstory". So we can customize further together and then book his vacation very easily and interactively. All these vacations have the personal and competent touch of a friendly travel consultant and at the same time is absolutely scalable through automation due to our intelligent algorithms.

The web application was developed to support the needs of our two user groups (travellers and hosts). It is based on an innovative IT system that determines the customer's profile and, based on this, creates tailor-made offers in a travelstory and sends them to the customer via email and other channels. The offers are automatically created from our database. At present, part of the process is still managed manually. In the future, the system will be further developed in order to be able to implement these processes increasingly automatically, supported by intelligent algorithms.

The user flow works as follows: Users answer a short interactive questionnaire online and then receive up to three non-binding offers tailored to their needs by e-mail or other channels. Based on a special storytelling approach, the offer presents the village, accommodation, diverse activities as well as additional information such as cultural, geographical and culinary highlights. In this way we simplify the search and booking of special destinations and extraordinary holiday experiences for travellers. More details about the booking process can be found in the attached graphic or in the video.

 

Established solutions focus primarily on commercial tourist destinations or neglect individual offers. amavido fills this market gap with its offering of tailor-made travel experiences and a strong focus on small and medium-sized authentic destinations as well ensuring a associated positive impact on these small communities.

Furthermore, the presentation of offers through the Travelstory and the intuitive user experience of amavido's web application is unique in the market so far.

amavido's business model is based on a commission model, for every successful booking amavido receives 20% of the booking value  (the sum of the rental price for the accommodation and price for various activities). The commission consists of 10 % on the host's side and 10 % on the customer's side. In the future, further sales and commission potentials can be generated, such as the sale of local host products via our online portal.

Initially, sales on the traveller side are mainly based on targeted online marketing campaigns. PPC campaigns (Pay Per Click) are used to achieve traction with target groups that have already been successfully tested. We also work with SEO, online and offline PR campaigns as well as collaborations with POI touchpoints (culinary, language, culture, etc.). We guide the visitors, which come though the campaigns, through the process on our page and support them in their booking decisions. Our approach here is not only to win enthusiastic travel customers, but also to build a sustainable and growing worldwide community.

The acquisition on the host side takes place through individual calls and emails. Furthermore we are already collaborating successfully with different local partners and networks such as Pro Loco or tourism offices in our goal destinations. In addition, PR (mainly online, TV and radio) is playing an important role as well. We also work with an ambassador program: these are locals who know the areas very well and acquire suitable hosts for us on site.

The amavido market consists of two sides: hosts and travellers. In order to be able to work and learn as focused as possible at the beginning, we have started with two sensibly selected pilot markets:

1st Germany / Traveller market:

The market for individual travellers is growing steadily, more and more people are interested in this type of travel. There is a continuously increasing demand, especially in the EU10+US market. The target group can best be defined by the well-known name of LOHAS (Nature conscious, Culture interested, Open-minded, Free-spending, Community engaged, Well-educated, Social values, environmental compatability, Liberal, Tolerant). In Germany alone, this growing target group amounts to over 12 million people. The market also has great potential with regard to the pilot host country Italy. The passion for Italy is unbroken in Germany. Each year more than 11 million people travel to Italy, of whom more than 50% call themselves individual tourists. Thus our target group amounts to approximately 2.5 million travellers and a volume over 1.5 billion dollars per year.

2nd Italy / host country:

The supply market in Italy is enormous. We focus on hosts, guides and experts in small and medium-sized destinations far away from mass tourism. These are often not easily found in established travel platforms, also due to the fact that the places are not well known and are discovered mostly only by chance. The offer amounts to more than 5.000 accommodations sites  all over Italy with more than 20.000 associated activities. In the future the offerings will continue to rise steadily, due to the growing demand for authentic tourism and by the planned developments of amavido.

Already starting from 2019 the piece-wise extension of the offer and demand markets is planned.

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The first goal is to realize a professional market entry into the German travel market. On the guest side, this means increasing sales through targeted PPC campaigns (pay per click - paid online advertising in social networks with clear focus groups) as well as supporting online and offline campaigns. On the other hand, the host database will be expanded to include more accommodations and activities. Furthermore, other countries will be added to amavido's portfolio within  2019. The IT system will be further developed and automated as well as enriched with new features. The use of the capital is distributed as follows: 20% Operations, 20% IT and 60% Marketing/Sales.

In the next step, product diversifications are planned, such as thematic travel packages, so called "amavido travel compositions” or the possibility for guests to purchase local products from our hosts online.

The long-term vision of amavido is to realize new and exciting tourism projects together with the local population. For this amavido will actively invest in interesting local project ideas, which will then be available exclusively to the amavido community as special holiday locations and experiences.

amavido was founded in july 2015. At the beginning of 2016 we successfully realized a crowdfunding campaign on startnext. In the further process we expanded the host base and built the team. At the beginning of 2017 we successfully completed our first financing round with a sum of 350.000 € with a loan from GLS bank, a public sector statal subsidy from the Investment Bank of Brandenburg called "Gründung Innovativ" and an investment from our business angel Dr. Kurt Jonas.

With the investment and the experiences with our first customers we developed, tested and implemented our market-ready product with a strong strategic positioning and are now ready for scaling. By testing and validating various online marketing channels, we have already made over 125 bookings and gained more than 500 hosts and activities throughout Italy as partners. In addition, we are supported by government institutions (BAFA, ILB) as an innovative company. Now we are starting the next round of financing and have already won two Italian investors for it, who are contributing € 150.000 in capital and their active cooperation including many years of international experience

Our media coverage so far ranges from interviews in major German and Italian radio and television stations to articles in well-known online blogs as well as national and regional daily and trade newspapers, including Flux FM, Radio Berlin, Media Set, Focus Online, Spiegel Online, Lifegate, Gründerszene, Berliner Tagesspiegel and Berliner Zeitung.

• https://www.tagesspiegel.de/wirtschaft/tourismus-urlauber-statt-leerstand/13310362.html
• https://www.fluxfm.de/neustart-amavido-slow-travelling-in-italienische-doerfer
• https://www.focus.de/gesundheit/qualitylifeforum2017/slow-tourism-so-nutzen-immer-mehr-deutsche-ihren-urlaub-um-sich-wirklich-zu-erholen_id_5764575.html
• https://www.gruenderszene.de/allgemein/amavido-startup-scanner?interstitial 
• https://www.startupvalley.news/de/amavido-unentdeckte-doerfer-italiens-kennenlernen/
• https://www.stuttgarter-nachrichten.de/inhalt.geschaeftsidee-tourismus-verliebt-euch-in-das-problem.a99db8d3-1b6c-420c-aab3-da2e44b7fe10.html
• https://start-green.net/aktuelles/nachrichten/amavido-im-interview/
• http://www.tgcom24.mediaset.it/speciale-giovane-europa/amavido-porta-i-turisti-tedeschi-nei-luoghi-dell-italia-piu-antica_3061652-201702a.shtml
• https://www.lifegate.it/persone/stile-di-vita/diventa-host-con-amavido
• http://www.marketingdelterritorio.info/index.php/en/opinioni/2865-amavido-la-start-up-che-porta-i-turisti-tedeschi-alla-scoperta-dei-piccoli-borghi-italiani
• https://www.lkz.de/home_artikel,-Italien-Reisen-mit-persoenlicher-Note-_arid,348857.html
• https://www.luzernerzeitung.ch/leben/ausgestorben-modeschoepfer-kaufen-geisterdoerfer-ld.1001650