Expert Interview with Ben Shaw
What were your 3 biggest areas of focus in 2023 and why?
First, we needed to ensure that the look and feel of our platform fits with the new generation of consumers, we redesigned everything from search to checkout. Second, we needed to maximise student deals on our site, we onboarded more than 20 airline partners over the last few months. Third, we needed to find a way to reach our consumer so we experimented with every possible marketing channel before perfecting our alerts product, social media strategy and metasearch integrations.
What are the biggest opportunities you see for 2024?
With Flyla we want to become the student travel hub turning existing inefficiencies in the opaque travel market that exist in every vertical into real opportunities where everyone wins: students, travel players, us. We’re laser-focused on flights for the beginning of next year – but once those are conquered we plan to come for other opportunities such as rental cars, group holidays, rail, bus, accommodation and others.
What are the biggest challenges you see ahead in 2024?
Addressing new verticals in the travel market comes with unforeseeable challenges. Finding new trusted partners as well as tailoring new convincing offers and promoting these will for sure keep us busy.
How do you see customer preferences now compared to this time last year?
The desire to travel among students is as big as never before. We have more and more bookings for flights all around the world.
What do you think is the most exciting tool that can be leveraged in the year ahead?
We’ve used generative AI-models such as GPT4 for a number of explorative use cases. Being open to new technologies may allow us to customize our value proposition further and we’re determined to keep experimenting next year, too.
You can hear directly from Ben in his session at Digital Travel:
DRAGONS’ DEN: Meet 5 travel disruptors as they showcase how they are revolutionising the travel industry
5 start-ups. 5-minute pitch each. A room full of potential users. Get a sneak peek into the most innovative digital travel offerings to see how they are revolutionising the travel industry.
Join us for this exciting ‘Dragon’s Den’ style session, where you will hear from three hand-picked new and innovative start-up travel companies as they present their offerings to a panel of experts and you in the audience.
The start-ups will answer questions put forward by our judges and you in the audience in a bid to win first place. The ultimate decision is in your hands, as the audience get to vote for the start-up you think is the most innovative and adds real value to your business. Will you find the next big thing?
- Marion Doucet Androlus, Deputy CEO & CPO, Koala Travel Insurance
- Ben Shaw, Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder, Flyla.com
- Mikael Danielian, Co-Founder, Trazler
- Stanislav Bondarenko, Founder, Swifty
- João Fernandes, Venture Developer, Uptrip
Judges: Andrew Crowe, Chief Operating Officer, Compare Ferries
Justin Albertynas, Founder & CEO, Ratepunk
Barry Klipp, Co-Founder & CEO,
Interlnkd (winner of the Dragons Den at Digital Travel Connect 2023)
To find out more view the full agenda here