Podcast
Becoming the Shopify of travel: Simon te Hennepe, CEO & Founder of TRAVLR
TRAVLR founder & CEO Simon te Hennepe joined Steve on Give It A Nudge to talk about the rollercoaster journey of start-up life.
About the guest
Simon te Hennepe
CEO and Founder at TRAVLR
Simon te Hennepe is the founder and CEO of TRAVLR, a Travel-as-a-Service (TaaS) platform that enables large-scale media companies, tourism organisations, and global retailers to own their own travel vertical. Simon built TRAVLR to bridge the gap between travel inspiration content and the ability to book, and steered the company through the devastating impact of COVID-19 on the global travel industry.
Episode overview
Simon te Hennepe joins Steve Grace to talk about building TRAVLR from the ground up: a Travel-as-a-Service platform that lets large media companies, tourism boards, and retailers embed a fully functional travel booking vertical into their own platforms. Simon covers his early entrepreneurial journey, the vision behind TRAVLR, and what it felt like to be building a travel startup when the world stopped travelling. He’s candid about what the pandemic cost the business and what it took to come through it.
Travel as a Service
The core insight behind TRAVLR is that millions of people are inspired to travel by content every day but have no direct path from inspiration to booking. Media companies and tourism organisations create enormous amounts of travel content, but historically couldn’t monetise that inspiration because they lacked the technology infrastructure to convert it into bookings. TRAVLR provides that infrastructure as a white-label service, making it possible for a media brand to effectively become a travel agency without building the technology themselves.
“The gap between being inspired to travel and actually being able to book has always been massive. We built the bridge.”
Simon te Hennepe 8:00
COVID-19 and the travel industry
Few industries were hit as hard by the pandemic as travel. Simon doesn’t sugarcoat it: TRAVLR’s pipeline, revenue, and growth trajectory all effectively went to zero in the first weeks of March 2020. The conversation covers how the team managed that shock, the decisions that were made about what to protect and what to cut, and how the rebound from late 2021 onwards vindicated the decision to hold the company together through the worst of it.
“COVID was obviously devastating for travel. But the companies that came through it are in a much better position now because the market has come back even stronger than we expected.”
Simon te Hennepe 24:00
The Shopify analogy
Simon uses the Shopify comparison deliberately. Just as Shopify gave any retailer the ability to run an e-commerce store without building the technology themselves, TRAVLR gives any content platform the ability to run a travel booking vertical without building the backend. The parallel is about democratising access to infrastructure that previously required either a massive technology investment or an acquisition.
“Shopify democratised retail. We’re trying to do the same thing for travel. Any media company or retailer should be able to have their own travel vertical without building it from scratch.”
Simon te Hennepe 12:00
Key takeaways
Chapters
0:00Introduction and Simon’s entrepreneurial background 6:00What TRAVLR does and the Travel-as-a-Service model 12:00The Shopify of travel analogy 18:00The target market: media companies, tourism boards, retailers 24:00COVID-19 impact and managing through the crisis 30:00The travel rebound and what it means for TRAVLR 36:00Fundraising, growth plans, and the road ahead
Mentioned in this episode
Frequently asked questions
What does TRAVLR do?
TRAVLR is a Travel-as-a-Service (TaaS) platform that enables large-scale media companies, tourism organisations, and global retailers to offer their own travel booking vertical. Rather than building the technology from scratch, partners embed TRAVLR’s white-label infrastructure into their own platforms to convert travel inspiration into bookings.
Why is TRAVLR called the Shopify of travel?
Just as Shopify allows any retailer to run a fully functional e-commerce store without building the backend technology themselves, TRAVLR allows any media company or retailer to run a travel booking vertical. The analogy captures TRAVLR’s model of democratising access to infrastructure that previously required massive technology investment or acquisition.
How did TRAVLR survive COVID-19?
COVID-19 effectively shut down global travel, devastating TRAVLR’s pipeline and revenue. The team made difficult decisions about what to protect and what to cut, held the core team together, and maintained partner relationships through the downturn. When travel demand rebounded, TRAVLR was positioned to capture that growth rather than starting from scratch.
Who are TRAVLR’s target clients?
TRAVLR’s primary target clients are large media companies that produce travel content, tourism organisations, and global retailers who want to offer travel as part of their customer experience. The common thread is organisations that already have a large audience of travel-inspired users but currently have no way to convert that inspiration into direct bookings.
What is Travel-as-a-Service?
Travel-as-a-Service is Simon’s framing for a platform model where travel booking infrastructure is offered as an embedded service rather than requiring each partner to build it themselves. It draws on the broader “as-a-service” trend in technology, where infrastructure is commoditised and made accessible to companies that want the outcome without the overhead of building the technology.
Topics discussed
Full transcript
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Show full transcript (45 minutes, 5 sections)
0:00 Introduction
Simon te Hennepe is the CEO and founder of TRAVLR, a Travel-as-a-Service platform. He joins Steve Grace on Give It A Nudge to talk about his entrepreneurial journey, the vision behind TRAVLR, and what it took to survive COVID-19 as a travel technology startup.
6:00 The TRAVLR model
TRAVLR is a Travel-as-a-Service platform enabling large-scale media companies, tourism organisations, and global retailers to effortlessly own their own travel vertical. The gap between being inspired to travel and actually being able to book has always been massive. Millions of people see travel content every day and want to act on it but can’t. TRAVLR builds the bridge. Think of it like Shopify but for travel. Just as Shopify let any retailer run an e-commerce store without building the backend, TRAVLR lets any media company run a travel booking vertical without building the technology from scratch.
20:00 COVID-19
COVID was obviously devastating for travel. Our whole business was in travel, and the world stopped travelling. We made hard decisions: what do we protect, what do we cut, how do we hold the team together? The companies that came through it are in a much better position now because the market came back even stronger than most people expected. We used the time to improve the platform and maintain our partnerships, so we were ready when the rebound happened.
30:00 The rebound and growth
From late 2021 onwards, travel demand came back sharply. Companies that held their position and maintained their technology and partnerships were well-placed to capture that demand. For TRAVLR, the rebound validated the decision to hold the company together through the worst of COVID. Our pipeline has been strong, and the vision for TRAVLR as the infrastructure layer for travel commerce is more relevant now than it was before the pandemic.
40:00 Advice for founders
For founders going through a crisis: focus on what you can control, protect the core of what makes your business valuable, and resist the temptation to make panic decisions. The founders who come through hard periods are usually the ones who stayed calm, made clear-headed decisions, and kept their team focused on the work that would matter when conditions improved.
About the host
Steve Grace is the founder and CEO of The Nudge Group, a technology-focused recruitment and advisory business. He has built and scaled companies across Australia and the US, and hosts Give It A Nudge to spotlight founders and operators building something meaningful.
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