New Amazon Prime-Like Service for Travel
Virgo is a high tech high touch travel agency. Virgo strives to provide its members a 5-star experience from booking all the way to returning home, and provides real travel perks without the gimmicks found at most online travel websites and apps. With the Virgo app, members can quickly book the hotels they know for the dates they want at a price that is fair.
Founded by the former Guestmob team and travel industry veterans, Virgo changes the travel landscape by removing the hassles and gimmicks of travel booking sites, simplifying the process and delivering real value to consumers.
“The booking and traveling experience is horrible. Online Travel Agents (OTAs) promise deals, but they all have the same inventory and prices. Consumers just want simplicity in the palm of their hand and the power to choose the hotel they want and the dates they want and know that they are getting the same price everyone else is. So we launched Virgo Travel. From your mobile phone, book the hotel you want and get free car service to the airport. That’s it. Like Amazon Prime with free two-day shipping, Virgo is launching perks consumers can use over and over again. And this is just the first perk. We plan to simplify the whole travel experience from door to door,” said Yann Ngongang, CEO and co-founder, Virgo.
Virgo is doing more by keeping it simple.
Virgo’s mission is to provide its members with products and perks that remove the hassles from travel. The company’s first product is hotel booking on an intuitive mobile app that simplifies the booking process. Instead of sifting through dozens of hotels, members who already know where they want to stay can book a room in just a few taps by searching for a specific hotel, picking one of three room types, and booking their room with their stored credit card. Hotel rates are the same or better than prices found at other online travel or metasearch sites like Expedia, Priceline, Booking, Orbitz, and Kayak.
After completing their hotel booking, Virgo members can schedule from the app the company’s first travel perk, free black car service to and from the airport. Virgo’s black car service currently serves San Francisco’s Bay Area airports, SFO, SJC, and OAK. With this travel perk, Virgo is executing on its mission to remove hassles and deliver real value without any gimmicks in order to save their members time and money. Members can avoid the hassles of long-term airport parking, unreliable taxis and on-demand car services. Instead, members can have a stress-free travel experience, knowing that the Virgo black car will pick them up and get them to their destination on time.
Virgo was founded by the team that launched Guestmob, a semi-opaque booking engine similar to Hotwire and Priceline. Guestmob used innovative pricing algorithms to deliver rock bottom rates, and was named by Travel + Leisure magazine as a top 5 booking site, 2 years in a row. After scaling the product to the largest 20 U.S. metropolitan areas, they realized that prices and algorithms were not enough to wow consumers. Price was just one of the many components of users’ decisions who were juggling amongst multiple products like air, hotel, and car rental while comparing many factors such as location, amenities, and flight times. The team concluded that most consumers are optimizing for best value and least hassle on their trip.
In fact, Virgo’s August 2014 Travel Insights Survey of leisure travelers, business travelers and families found that while consumer sentiment has not changed, most online travel agencies and travel search engines still have yet to address their most pressing needs. For example, over one-third of travelers said that the most difficult part of booking a hotel is finding the best rate (36%) while nearly a quarter of respondents said that it takes too long to research and find a hotel (24%). Further highlighting consumer frustration with researching and booking their trips, over half of respondents who use booking sites like Priceline and Hotwire said that they would not want to risk booking blind and get a hotel they do not want (54%), and nearly all respondents said they would not wait until day of check-in to book a hotel with same-day booking apps like HotelTonight and Expedia (88%).
Instead, Virgo is delivering prices equal to or less than prices found online and great perks on all hotels all the time. Virgo members can book over 270K hotels worldwide at rates equal to or lower than those found at travel sites like Expedia, Priceline, and Orbitz. Virgo is a member-based service with an annual fee of $99.