Big Interview: How far has solo adventure tour operator WeRoad come in a year?

Last year, almost to the day, Travolution sat down with Andrea D'Amico, CEO of Italian solo adventure tour operator WeRoad, where he shared his big and bold plans to be ‘Europe’s leading group adventure tour operator by 2025’. A year on, we check in to see how it's tracking.

Q: How has 2024 been for business? 

A: It’s been very good. We had more than 75,000 people traveling with us, which is roughly 60% more than how many travelled with us last year and we are becoming more and more international. Italy remains our main market - it’s where we started, so it is the most mature but business coming from outside Italy is now at 25%. Looking at the trajectory, we expect this to be like 35-40% next year. So I hope that very soon, we will end up in a situation where Italy is not the majority of our business anymore. Expect markets like Germany or the UK itself to become bigger.

Q: When we spoke last year, you said each new market that you launched grew faster than the one before. The UK as your third market launched hasn’t grown as much as France and Germany have. Why do you think that is?

A: I think the UK is the most challenging market, because it is also the most competitive in two senses. First, because all the players are there. And it has players who have been in the industry for more than 10 years. They're still focusing a lot on marketing, plus, the cost of marketing itself, the cost of acquisition of customers, is higher than other places. So, for example, when we focus a lot on out of home campaigns to get our name there, especially if you do it in London, is much more than the other markets. And London is more difficult than other places to grab the attention of a potential customer, because they are bombarded by so many messages.

What we're really focusing on is what is unique about us, which is the community piece. So instead of just pouring money at marketing, this year the focus has been more on the events. You travel with us? Fantastic. Now, if you want to be still engaged with us, and you want to stay in touch with the people you already met, or to meet new people, we do that with our events.

We also partner with organisations like Manchester Young Professionals. They have a target group that overlaps with ours. So we do co-branded events. So people might know them but they don't know us yet. We do these events where people get the opportunity to know about WeRoad, and then eventually they end up also coming to our event. 

In the UK, we are focusing more on the community piece, more than the other places, because to stand out, it's better to make people understand what is different about us. Otherwise, if they don't perceive a difference, people will not understand why they should switch. If I’ve never had a bad experience with other operators, why I should move?

Q: There’s been some changes since we last spoke. You’ve announced that WeRoad.co.uk is moving to WeRoad.com, why is that?

A: At the moment you have www.weroad.co.uk where you have the itineraries for UK customers, and then you have www.weroad.com that is for international customers. But we’ve basically seen that people are interested in traveling in English, whether they're from the from the UK, from the Netherlands or so on. So having this distinction doesn’t really make much sense. 

Also, operationally, we are now bringing the two platforms together under www.weroad.com but it doesn't change the focus we have on the UK, which remains a key market. We’re still working on getting more customers and doing a lot of activities and events on the ground. On the consumer side, the co.uk platform will be united with .com to avoid customer confusion. Previously, customers would see the itinerary on both sites and wonder about the differences. Now we don't really have a reason to keep them. Before - when we started - the focus of the platform was based on a country, so Italy's pain and so on but now we’ve really changed the approach and the platform is on a language basis, so Italian, Spanish, English, French, and German.

Q: I think it’s a great move. Was this based on feedback?

A: We started to merge the groups to streamline operations. Say if you were going to Guatemala on 12 October on the .co.uk, you would also see Guatemala for 12 October, on the.com version. If we saw that the itinerary was not full on one platform, we combined them and the experience was perfectly fine. So, we tried and tested it first and found that UK-based customers didn’t mind traveling with people from other nationalities.

At first, we wanted to build a distinct UK community of travellers. But in the end, we see that the community is stronger at a city level. We keep the community engaged with events, with things that we do, but those happen at a city level. If someone travels with us from southern Italy, they are not going to join an event that is happening in Milan. Basically, they are attached to the community that is close to them. So that's why, for example, for the UK, we now think about a London community, a Manchester community, a Liverpool community and so on. Again, we changed the approach, this time from country to a city strategy. And then, London is already quite difficult on a city level. It's quite big. So there might be differences by area. We’ve tested it more in Manchester, which is a smaller city. Logistics are a bit easier and we saw great results. From these events we saw frequent customers but also new customers who didn't know us. They joined our event and ended up booking itineraries with us.

Q: What do you think is one of the best USPs WeRoad has that sets you apart from other operators?

A: I think the community, which is the community of WeRoad travel coordinators and is a very important part of a much bigger community, which is the community of our travellers, WeRoaders. 

We have the WeCoordi app for coordinators and in the same way we built this app for the coordinators to interact, to engage and to be in touch with each other, we are going to develop an app for tconsumers. 

The idea is that they will have very similar functionality. So it's not only an app where you might find and book your itinerary but also an app that after you travel with us, you interact with to have fun, find events, or day activities that you can do with us. Maybe in the future you might be able to message each other, in the same way the coordinators can message each other.

Q: WeRoad unveiled new segments – how much work has gone into these recently to create the new offering for travellers?

A: We leveraged our community of travel coordinators. So, for example, for the ‘Weekends’ segment (quick short-haul getaways for a maximum of 4 nights available in the Italian market), we created some itineraries internally, but actually the ones that work better are the ones created by the coordinators. It’s about giving them the technology to create and upload the itineraries designed by them, rather than doing it ourselves. The same goes for 'Thematic' trips (e.g. yoga and wellness retreats, literary, cinematographic, sporting, or art tours). We give them guidance on trip themes and design, ensuring consistency with customer expectations.

‘Collections’ segment (exclusive travel experiences featuring high-end, hand-picked hotels and premium experiences) is the one where we put more effort in internally as it involves private rooms options, but for the rest, we really rely a lot on the coordinators.

Q: How were the new segments born?

A: We see what trends are out there in the market and we also get customer feedback. We found out that some people love our trips but want to bring their partner and stay in a private room. We continually think about the possible blockers that you might have booking a trip. Similarly, with the 'Collection’ segment we found there is a higher-end customer base today willing to pay more for premium accommodation.

Then ‘Weekends’ and 'Express' (a 4 night short haul getaway) was born out of a realisation that shorter trips could attract a different customer base. We did a test before the summer with around 20 itineraries, and they were super popular. I think 14 of them departed.

The most important thing for us is the customer satisfaction score and this was even higher than the normal ones 

Q: What happened to the six itineraries that didn’t depart?

A: It was the first time testing them. In some cases, the dates were, destination or the connections weren't suitable.

Q: Looking back over the last year since we spoke, you've had a lot to celebrate. A month later in November you closed your Series B for 18 million euros, grown to nearly 3,000 coordinators, which is 50% growth and serviced 75,000 travellers so far this year. But what is it you're most proud of?

A: We have many more itineraries compared to a year ago, with much higher volumes, bigger customer base and our satisfaction score has increased. That is what really makes me very confident that our operations are very strong, that the team has the right focus. Because when you ramp up the way we have, there might be a risk that you lose sight of the details when you just go for the big numbers, but actually we went the opposite. I said: "Wow, we did that." We thought maybe we are going to miss a bit on the quality but actually, we have improved even. That's what made me really proud.

Q: What has been the critical change in the last 12 months that you've done as a business to improve growth and trajectory?

A: I think the developments in technology. For example, the tech platform for our coordinators, to create itineraries independently, will support our growth.

The next step would be to open our platform also to local suppliers, to the destination management companies (DMCs). I think eventually the supply of itineraries will come from three sources. We will have our internal team, like we’ve always had, then we have the coordinators creating the itineraries, and then, local suppliers with initial management companies creating and uploading and selling themselves the itineraries. But always in line with our guidelines, in line with our criteria, and always with our own coordinators. They [DMCs] create it, the itinerary will go in for assignment, and then the coordinators will assign themselves for that itinerary that is created.

On the consumer side, nothing will change in terms of experience, because they will still have a coordinator.

Q: What are you most excited about for the future? When can we expect the consumer app?

A: Our consumer app is a tool to support the community. We are starting to work with on it now, but I think it will take time, because we have to improve it, to iterate it. I don't expect that in a year from now, we'll have a product that is really finished. What I am excited about though, as you know, is we have many initiatives and plans in mind. So our cities, and of course, still working on our core products and expanding on weekends and events, even further.

It's exciting to see that happening and also to see that happening in more countries. So to start seeing growth in Italy, in France, Germany, UK, but also seeing more from the Netherlands, from Poland etc so that we are building something that is truly European and eventually truly global, too.