Venture Concept #2

My service plans to meet the needs of many young people across the world, ambitious I know, but I believe my service can satisfy this need and provide great value to the client. This need is to connect with other people, learn about different cultures, learn more about yourself and have an experience of a lifetime. The reason my target segment (young people – more specifically college students) has these needs is because of the world becoming more globalized, the age of living within the limits of your birthplace are gone, the world is expanding, becoming more multicultural and the sooner you can understand these cultures and other people, the more of an advantage you’ll have. One force creating this need is the trend to spend more on experiences rather than materialistic things. More and more young adults would rather spend money on an experience, like study abroad, music festivals, and vacations than materialistic things like a new TV or an Xbox. This provides an opportunity to create customized experiences that will change the perspective of the individual. Providing an invaluable learning experience, which will enable them to understand other people and other cultures a lot better than they did before. Thus, this market is defined demographically, rather than geographically. It is dependent on one’s openness to experience, interest in meeting others, curiosity about the outside world, craving for growth and if they are financially able to afford such an experience.

Customers are currently satisfying this need by vacations; however, it doesn’t allow them to immerse themselves into another culture. As they are visiting as a tourist, so they can’t understand the culture, the mindset or the societal norms and traditions. Instead, they scam the surface, thinking they’ve satisfied their need to see new things, meet new people and understand other societies. However, they haven’t. All they’ve done is go to a new place and look around and go to a few attractions and restaurants that are there for the tourists. My service will be providing an opposite experience, in which trip’s core activities will be focused around immersing them into the culture, meaning they will do what the locals do, understand how they live, and then compare it to your own. I believe this opportunity is huge, and will only continue to expand, especially considering the emphasis placed on travel by young people. I think this window of opportunity will continue to be open until someone else provides this service.

My service will offer customized cultural experiences for customers. How it works is the customer comes to me with a need: to travel to a new place and understand their culture. This need may vary in where they want to go, how they want to spend their time (partying or learning), what type of accommodation they want to stay in (apartments, university housing, or a house) and what type of area they want to stay (rural, suburban or in the city). I will then use my social capital to find a place for them to stay suiting their needs. I will plan out their entire trip; where they stay and what they do. Where the unique value comes in is they will be staying with my friends (the locals) and will be living how they live. This will allow for a much more inclusive, cultural learning experience. I have friends in all over the world that would help start up the business. All over London, all over England (Manchester, Hull, Reading, Leeds, Essex, Liverpool, Birmingham, Sussex and plenty more) Paris, Berlin, Austria, Dubai, Australia (Sydney and Melbourne) Iceland, Florida, New York, Virginia, Massachusetts, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and many more states. I would use this capital to match the client to a county of their choice and pay the hosts a small fee to let them stay with them. I would then plan out the vacation to suit their needs. If the hosts wanted to stay with the client afterwards, I wouldn’t even pay the host a fee, as the client would host next, allowing for a mutually beneficial scenario. 

2) Provide a summary of the feedback you received from your previous venture concept description. You certainly want to include the student feedback, but you may also include the feedback you received from others during the "What's Next" exercise. You want to summarize all of the feedback, but be sure to place an emphasis on what people recommended you change about your idea. (In other words, don't just describe the positive feedback.)

Summary Of Feedback 
The feedback I got from people in this class, and from the people I Interviewed were all positive, constructive points. Not one person said they didn't like the idea, or that they thought it wouldn't be a success, which was great encouragement for me. One piece of good feedback I received was that I should market to affluent consumers, as they are the only people that can afford a service like this. I also received great feedback from a friend who said he would like to experience something like this, but doesn't have the money. Which gave me the idea to adjust my business plan accordingly.

How I changed my concept 
How I changed my concept based on this feedback is creating two options: an international luxury experience and an international cheap experience. Thus both groups of consumers can use my service. The first would take into consideration that money is not an issue. When planning their trip, I would adjust their location, transportation, accommodation and activities according. The same goes for the other group of non affluent consumers, I would adjust their needs to fit their budget.