Case study: Famliday
Famliday creates digital offering uniquely tailored to family holidays
Amadeus supports family-focused online travel agency through unique global startups program Launchpad and social innovation network Travel4Impact as business grows.
Who we are?
Based in Spain, Famliday is a leisure-focused online travel agency (OTA). Founded in 2020, the company offers trips to families – both traditional and non – with a focus on those with children up to 12-13 years old.
The online-only platform lets families search, compare and book holiday accommodation and leisure activities with unique filters allowing users to drill down on specific needs per location. Additionally, they complement their travel offerings for families with car rental.
Chief Executive Officer, Javier Salvador, and his business partners had previously focused on leisure projects related to family resorts and water parks - and still maintain a business of engineering and accredited safety inspectors (The Fun Lab
) - but found clients sought advice on more comprehensive trips. Famliday was founded in response.
With its official headquarters in Valencia and a main commercial office in Madrid, the company aims to be the marketplace for family holidays. After its launch in the Spanish market, Famliday is innovating to expand, with plans firmly in place as market recovery continues to accelerate.
In December 2020, Famliday was recognized with the Thinktur label by the Spanish Tourism Technological Platform (supported by the Hotel Technological Institute and the Ministry of Tourism in Spain), which considers the project to be of great interest for the digitalization of the sector. More recently, in March 2021, Famliday won the Spanish edition of the global pitch competition organized by Founders Live.
What are the fundamentals?
Headquarters
Industry
Plan
Website
What was the challenge?
The initial idea of Famliday was created just days before the first COVID-19 lockdown in Spain. This posed significant challenges for the organization as we tried to establish ourselves in the first few months.
However, this was also a tremendous learning curve for us. We took the opportunity to interview customers, really delving into what they wanted from a family-focused OTA, and how we could put the family travel market front-and-center of our offering like never before.
This is the background and inspiration for our tagline: “Made by, and for, families.”
“If you are a small or start-up organization, do not be afraid to get help from partners like Amadeus. Even if you are an established small or medium-sized organization, you can sometimes benefit from a review of the way you work as the world of travel continues to evolve."Javier Salvador, Chief Executive Officer of Famliday
With our plans in place, we worked to develop our digital offering; we are fully online, with no physical retail presence. Perhaps before 2020, this would have been a less attractive offering, but the COVID-19 pandemic has rapidly accelerated the digitalization of the travel industry in Spain and around the globe, giving us much more confidence in our decision.
A lot of business was previously done face-to-face, but we are now thriving as a digital native organization.
How did Amadeus support?
We first met Amadeus through itsLaunchpad, a global startups program designed to support rapidly growing, technology-led organizations in the travel space. This helped us examine which solutions we might need to make our business work, while they also introduced us to valuable service providers and partners.
The next step was working withTravel4Impact , an Amadeus social innovation network supporting the travel and tourism industry by leveraging digitalization, sustainability and collaboration. The program looks to help innovative companies to scale their ideas, with a focus on promoting digitalization and sustainability to help SMEs increase their positive social and environmental impact. Run in partnership withIE University , this offered us great opportunities to network with like-minded individuals, and we found that meeting significant leaders in the area who shared their stories helped us to finalize our business direction. We particularly benefitted from two of the frameworks that Travel4Impact teachers specifically train Travel4Impact SMEs to use: the Theory of Change (which we use to measure the impact of our activities) and the Value Stream Mapping (which we have adapted to Famliday’s characteristics).
“Do not close your eyes to change – it can be scary but must be faced and change will grow your business. When things click, it is a euphoric moment!”
Javier Salvador, Chief Executive Officer of Famliday
In this space, ideas can be developed and explored, while the Travel4Impact teachers also offered us key insight.
The Travel4Impact network also taught us a lot about sustainability. We discovered the topic is not merely about improving the environmental management’ of our business, it extends far beyond. Sustainability includes the impact we have on society, the paradigm shift within the industry, collaboration with various stakeholders to bring about positive change through our business and the significance of placing people at the heart of our strategies, among other topics. Through Travel4Impact, we have been able to uncover tools and techniques that have transformed sustainability across Famliday from a mere concept into a tangible, day-to-day operational reality.
With this relationship established, we utilizeAmadeus Selling Platform Connect in our operations, will be implementingAmadeus Value Hotels and will be a pilot customer for Amadeus Discover (a platform enabling destination ecosystems to collaborate and efficiently deliver their destination content) and Amadeus Value Cars White Label (expansion of Amadeus prepaid content beyond hotels) which will be progressively rolled out later this year.
What did you reimagine?
Famliday has created an offering tailored to the specific needs of families with children from ages 0-13. Older than this, adolescents grow in independence, so require less family-focused holidays.
We recognized this and created a unique set of content filters, designed to reflect the needs of these travelers. ‘Family’ is also a flexible term, and we are non-traditional in that sense: this can be grandparents traveling with grandchildren, single parents, same-sex couples or even ‘PANKs’ (Professional Aunt, No Kids), groups which holiday with more distant relatives such as nieces or nephews.
Around 70 per cent of our clients are traditional, while the remaining 30 per cent take a different configuration, the point being we cater to all family formats.
Existing travel agents will suggest a location that is family friendly but won’t explain why. We offer more information on each property, detailing exactly what makes it right for your trip. Famliday have an extensive database, which draws on data from Amadeus and then is built upon by our team.
At the same time, we maintain a full API integration withAmadeus Discover, a destination distribution platform. This allows us to offer a uniquely detailed set of opportunities to families, unrivalled elsewhere. Smaller, local activities can digitalize their offering, distributing through Amadeus and allowing us to offer it to our customers.
Results
“Familday is a very interesting solution for all those tourist accommodation groups that are dedicated to the family segment, until now there was no channel that was so specialized in this target. In addition, it is the type of digital platform that families need: a website where you know that all the establishments are specially designed for the enjoyment of families, where you know that they are going to get it right."
Alannia Resorts Group
