If we don't, who will?
Hanna Zhyhar
Product Manager @ Kiwi.com | Co-Founder @ Eightydays.me. Build travel products people love.
It has always been my conviction that founders, co-founders and the team members must enjoy what they create. It would not be that accurate to say that “they must”, it sounds somehow in a dictatorial way. ??
Above all, they are willing on their own to be an essential part of their product. A team should consist of such people; these are the values, which should be laid at the very primary level.
They should make an effort to use, support and deeply understand their product. They should engage others, through being the most fervent believer in what they are building. If they are not then, honestly, who will/should?
What am I getting at? It’s my turn to go travelling.
Vilnius - Athens - Corfu - Milan - Vilnius | $173 | 5 days
The main goal of the trip is the product testing before and after the purchase, feedbacks collection, searching for pangs and weak points and resolving the most unexpected and questionable matters, which may appear during the journey.
Otherwise, how can I convince users to take a trip with us, if I do not experience firsthand what it is like?
What came out of this, you can read on my Facebook page
Finally, I can take a stock of a five-day journey with Eightydays.me.
I gathered my resolve, which definitely will make my trips much easier, smoother, and more exciting in the future:
- to book accommodation close to the city center, in order to hassle-free get the place where you will travel to explore the next city
- in advance to think through the alternative ways of reaching the airport/the railway station, otherwise, your chain may be broken and you will have to waste extra resources to restore the previous plan (again the killer feature of the 1.5 Eightydays version)
- not to try to see an oodles of places simultaneously, a city should be discovered by easy stages, then a journey makes sense
- to trust exclusively the locals’ advice, all the others opinions should be kept in mind, but not as the basis while building the route.
I also was given many proofs from my personal experience and thoughts regarding the product. Something is already being implemented in the following release; something is still in the inbox for the future development:
- Adding into the app the info regarding the city spots, which are trusted by all the people, in case you don’t trust all the Locals things, you can just go the place you are sure about almost 100%. Uber, Starbucks, Ibis, Dominos, WeWork, and so on. For example, Starbucks is the place where you are sure about the level of coffee and where you can get a working place with the internet connection.
- Offline information on the issues how to get to the airport, to the railway station and back. It just makes the process extremely simpler. You’d better spend this extra hour for the city exploration, and savings (sometimes it costs dirt cheap) – for a couple of magnets and postcards, which will stay as a reminder of your adventure. Once again, the killer feature of the 1.5 Eightydays version.
- To integrate into Eightydays.me the actual schedule of the main train stations and airports of the city, in order to have it all in one place, and there would be no need to open dozens of websites to find this info on the internet. We are well on our way to meeting this objective, and the trick of this issue is not to overdo it, not to try to create one more travel monster “all in one”.
- We are also working on AI, which defines the importance of the city for a traveler, and will adjust pastime in the cities according to different criteria.
- We would like to follow the way just by advisories: 2-3 hotels/cafes per a city. We try to visit cities, airports, places ourselves, and it means, that we also may recommend them to our users. It’s a very fine line and our work with the credibility of the users as well.
The output:
Use your product in order to have a better perception of what the users desire. And travel more. You only live once, but there are 197 countries in the world. Learn about people, the way they live, what they eat, what they look at day by day, what problems they face. At the very least, you would spend your time with interest. At the most, the others would be interested to spend time with you :)
We keep on working heart and hand.