Rod Cuthbert, co-founder of Viator, shares the creation story of the pioneering online booking platform for tours and activities. He discusses the challenges faced in the early days, the company's rapid growth, and the uncertainties in the travel industry. Cuthbert reflects on luck and serendipity in entrepreneurship, emphasizing the importance of personal relationships in business success.
Viator pioneered online tours, adapting to post-9/11 market changes.
Understanding core customer preferences crucial for success in tours industry.
Paying suppliers promptly and focusing on essential products key to Viator's growth.
Deep dives
Rod Cuthbert's Entrepreneurial Journey and Founding Viator
Rod Cuthbert, the co-founder of Viator, shared his journey from starting a website building company to specializing in online travel. With a focus on travel clients, they pivoted to concentrate solely on the travel industry, noticing the potential. Winning a contract from Sabre for a web-based system for travel agents marked a pivotal moment.
Timing and Market Discovery in the Travel Industry
Cuthbert reflected that Viator's success was partly due to being early in the market post-9/11 changes. Viator aimed to pioneer tours and activities bookings, seeing an opportunity in an emerging sector. He discussed market discovery and understanding core customer preferences like hop-on-hop-off buses over niche activities.
Strategic Decision-making and Industry Impact
Viator's success was credited to paying suppliers promptly post-9/11 and focusing on essential products that travelers commonly seek. The discussion shifted to the evolving travel landscape and how Viator's early initiatives impacted the broader industry, with insights on Google's role.
Transition and Entrepreneurial Realizations
As Viator grew, Cuthbert acknowledged when to step aside to allow a more suitable CEO to lead the company effectively. Transitioning to other ventures like Rome2Rio, he recognized the changing requirements of leading a larger company and the importance of adapting to different growth phases.
Future Outlook and Investor Connections
Cuthbert discussed the unpredictable nature of forecasting the travel industry's future amid uncertain times. He shared a lucky investment encounter with a Danish investor, highlighting the significance of personal connections and unexpected opportunities in entrepreneurial journeys.
After a timely break of a few months after completing the first 28-stretch of episodes, How I Got Here returns for its second season.
Nowadays, Rod Cuthbert is a recognizable figure on the conference circuit, an investor and a valuable critic of new businesses and ideas as they come through the Launch and Summit programs at Phocuswright's events.
But he's best known as the co-founder of Viator, Australia's pioneering online booking platform for tours and activities that he created in the 1990s and was involved with until just before its sale to TripAdvisor in 2014.
Pundits still often label the tours and activities the "Wild West" sector in 2020 but in Viator's early days it was almost pre-humanoid.
Cuthbert shares the back story to the creation of the company and its heady growth period in the 2000s as our first guest of season two on How I Got Here.
HIGH is a weekly show produced by PhocusWire and Mozio, aimed at getting the inside stories behind startups and innovation in travel and transportation.
It's hosted by our editor in chief, Kevin May, and Mozio co-founder and CEO David Litwak.