WTM 2015: Cycling start-up Mollydoo is first travel firm to use crowd funding app Payzella

A specialist cycling tour operator has launched whilst becoming a pioneering user of Payzella, the social payments crowd funding app.

A specialist cycling tour operator has launched whilst becoming a pioneering user of Payzella, the social payments crowd funding app.

Mollydoo.com was founded by Paul Middleton, a travel technologist for 15 years who got into cycling eight years ago when he did his first triathlon.

Private equity backed Payzella is headed by Richard Turner, formerly of Comtec, and Tony Evans, chief executive of tprofile, which built the technology.

Fellow founders include Comtec chairman Simon Powell and former Thomas Cook director Richard Calvert, chief executive of Destination Weddings.

It enables tour leaders to put together groups and easily manage the payments for each individual in that group.

“I’ve always wanted my own business and this allows me to use my background in travel technology to do something different in cycling.

“It started when I was looking for a cycling holiday for my 50th birthday and I could not find what I wanted. No site was that inspiring.

“Cycling is quite social, people will go away with people they’ve not met before. I wanted to create a community so people can share it with their mates.”

The Payzella functionality on Mollydoo.com is triggered when a customer creates a group, the tour leader is provided with a dashboard from which the group can be managed.

A team of three at Mollydoo.com will research and suggest product based on customer requirements and there are also pre-selected tours that users can browse and opt for before the group is created.

“We are the first in travel to use Payzella. This is taking all the pain away from operating a group,” said Middleton.