When she decided to become an entrepreneur after working for more than 25 years in the telecommunications sector, Aurora Soriano looked for a problem to solve. Six years ago, she cofounded PinoyTravel after she realized that the provincial travel industry remained in an archaic state where people still need to go to the bus terminals to buy tickets. She lamented that in most parts of the country the absence of bus terminals forced people to wait by the roadside as chance passengers despite having a smartphone in their possession.
Soriano thought it was astonishing to realize that it was much easier to book a flight to New York than to book for a bus ride to a local destination just a few miles away.
This led to the establishment of PinoyTravel. Soriano was joined by her husband Ruel, former colleague Sherwin Sowy, and scuba diving friend Bogie Puzon to create a feasible business plan for PinoyTravel. When it was done, they pitched at Ideaspace for funding.
Separately, Maui Millan,with a team of six from RideIn was also vying for the funding with a similar business concept.
When the two groups learned about this, they decided that instead of competing with each other, both teams should join forces. This decision gave them greater synergy to complete all competencies needed to create, launch and sustain an online bus reservation business.
Soriano told the BusinessMirror in an e-mail interview that PinoyTravel has grown in terms of volume and coverage as more bus and ferry companies have started embracing online booking and ticket issuance automation at the terminals and ports.
We have grown in terms of volume and coverage as more bus and ferry companies have accepted online booking and ticket issuance automation, Soriano said.
“Customers are much happier now because of this option. Operationally, we have experienced many mistakes and have learned from these mistakes. We are more mature and smarter now in dealing with the issues of the business,” Soriano added.
Bus partners of PinoyTravel include Amihan Buslines, Bataan Transit Co. Inc., Bicol Isarog, Cherry, Cisco, CODA, Del Monte Land Transportation Bus Co., Fariñas Transit, First North Luzon, Five Star, Joy Bus, Genesis Transport Service, Jam, Omayami, PhilTranco, Peñafrancia Tours and Travel Transport Inc. and RSL.
Ferry Partners are 2GO Supercat, Cokaliong Shipping Lines Inc., Island Water, 2GO Travel, FastCat and Weesam Express.
In terms of expansion, Soriano said entrepreneurs in the travel industry should practice caution in promoting local tourism. She added promoting a certain destination depends upon a lot of factors such as saturation, among others.
“Some are already heavily promoted to the point of destruction. Take Boracay and Sagada as examples. Once, an environmentalist called me out saying that making things too easy and cheap will cause overtourism, which is detrimental to some destinations. Personally, I agree with her, but I think the promotion should also include responsible traveling and the locals should be taught how to protect their tourist destinations,” Soriano said.
As far as the provincial bus industry is concerned, Soriano said the main challenge is the lack of buses during peak travel days. One solution, according to Soriano, is to try to spread out the market by encouraging travels during off days and the best way to do this is to adopt dynamic pricing.
“Many of the bus companies are actually willing to lower the fares during off-peak, sadly, the fares are highly regulated and lowering of fares is illegal,” she said.
PinoyTravel is gearing up for more expansion, as it has yet to sign all bus and ferry companies. “The long-term plan is to have everyone on board so passengers are shown all their options,” she said. She added they faced challenges at every stage of the business. Earlier, the biggest challenge of PinoyTravel was convincing the bus companies to adopt online booking. Then the company faced payment issues because the majority of the market did not have credit cards and bank accounts.
PinoyTravel also had to address its escalating operational cost to increase revenues. “We have to upgrade our booking because the bus companies and market had become more sophisticated. And along the way there we shareholder issues, and employee issues,” Soriano said.
Nevertheless, Soriano made sure she was not overwhelmed by these problems. She said, however, there was a time when the challenges seemed insurmountable that she almost decided to close the company. “I addressed the issues one at a time and made sure I forgave myself for the wrong decisions I made and moved on,” she said.
“We started to see growth on our third year,” she added.
Asked what it takes to succeed in the travel industry, Soriano said one has to be an avid traveler as this would allow one to anticipate what the market would want and create a business model that is relevant. “I thought of PinoyTravel because of my travels abroad when I experienced efficient public transportation,” she said.