I suppose we are all a product of our background and experiences and Amuda Goeli, co-founder of Destinia, certainly comes across as an individual who’s very comfortable in his own skin.
Amuda Goeli started Destinia as a hobby and passion.
Growing up in Aswan, Egypt, he did not see a light bulb till he was nine years old. He laughs at the notion that today he is surrounded by all sorts of technology that he never dreamt of as a kid.
Speaking in English for the first time at a travel conference – he switched between English and Arabic (Spanish is his third language) – the Madrid-based Goeli talked about how and he and his co-founder Ian Webber founded Destinia in 2001 as a hobby and passion, “not for money”.
He started it with 300 Euros and today, Destinia remains an independent company, with him and Webber remaining as co-owners. He didn’t bother with fund-raising nor is he interested at this stage to raise funds.
Being independent clearly has its privileges – such as the ability to experiement and innovate. “I look into the mirror and who do I see? Myself and so I can decide quickly,” he said.
This explains why he was the first to launch a new hotel reservations app with Google Glass. He shrugs when asked what happened to that given that Glass is if not dead than nowhere real at the moment.
“We try.”
He also accepted bitcoin payment in early 2014 to test the market, was surprised by the uptake and today, he accepts bitcoin payment in 15 countries. “You never know till you try.”
He runs his company as a big team of small start-ups with each team doing their own experimentation. One thing he’s working on is doing away with the search box, and replacing it with AI (Artificial Intelligence).
“There’s room for everyone,” Amuda Goeli tells WIT’s Yeoh Siew Hoon.
He is unfazed by the scale of the global OTAs. He shrugs when I share the data point supplied by Phocuswright that in the last two years, Expedia and Priceline gained nine points of global market share and assuming Expedia takes in Travelocity and Orbitz’s customers (if the deal goes through), these two OTAs will own roughly 60% of the global OTA market in 2015.
“It’s okay, there’s room for everyone.”
He said Destinia has two million unique visits, and its app has two million downloads. It’s a full service OTA, and hotels account for 30% of its business. Of its hotel content, 10% are direct contract, the rest aggregated.
He is bullish about the Middle East market. Last year, he announced a relaunch into the region, and he predicted at that time that MENA would represent about 30% of overall sales within the next three years.
He now feels that number is a bit conservative, saying they’ve seen a big uptake in business in the last six months.
“Here things happen very quickly. You put in advertising and your numbers immediately go up. In Europe, it’s very slow,” he said. I recall visiting Dubai last year and just seeing Destinia billboards everywhere and clearly that investment has paid off.
Mobile accounts for 70% of transactions in the Middle East, he said, far higher than in any other market. “Our customers in the Middle East trust us. That is why we are growing.”
Asked why they should trust Destinia over other OTAs, he said, “We are a local brand. I am from the region. I understand the market.”
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