PAN-GO BUSINESS PLAN

THE TEAM Miwa Ikemiwa | Project Manager

Shima Khaki | Lead Visualizer

Max Sims | Lead Writer

Cansu Tecimer | Lear Archivist & Researcher

THE MARKET NEED

CURRENT MARKET TRENDS

The world is getting smaller in a number of ways.

People are connecting to one another internationally

and locally online through social media with 540 million

on Facebook and counting. Ordinary individuals have

the resources to get a lot of things done on their own

without the help of large institutions or companies.

This is evident in the rising trend of micro-business

websites where anyone can turn an extra room, a car,

or a skill into extra income. The value these websites

bring is creating a platform on which people can

showcase their offerings to an international

customer base.

Currently, in the market, there are social websites that

create online communities, there are peer-to-peer

marketplaces for resource sharing, and there are travel

blogs and tour companies geared towards what to do

when traveling.

THE PAIN POINT

“People love exploring new places but have trouble

meeting local people and having genuine non-touristy

experiences.”

social community

travel

experiences

peer to peer

VISION, MISSION & VALUES

VALUE PROPOSITION

Pan-go is a platform integrating 3 key concepts into its

business plan:

• A strong sense of community

• A peer-to-peer platform

• Database of travel experiences

Fundamentally, it is a website with a database of peer-

to-peer local experiences offered at affordable prices.

VISION & MISSION

We envision a travel platform for the college-age

international traveler that offers a secure way of

exchanging meaningful local experiences at

affordable prices.

COMPANY VALUES

We are committed to diversity.

We have an appreciation for life and exploration.

We promote the entrepreneurial mind-set and agile thinking.

We are an idea democracy.

We value ethical and empathetic behavior.

We offer trustworthy and secure environments.

We promote playful collaboration.

VISION STATEMENT

Creating cultural understanding in the youth of the world

through shared authentic experiences.

TARGET MARKET

CURRENT TOURISM MARKET

880 million people travel internationally each year. There

is a rising trend in the tourism market of “Independent

Travelers”, people who do not book through travel

agents, who do not travel in packs, who do their own

research and are increasingly using social media to do

so. Conservatively, they make up well over 50% of the

tourism market.

TARGET AUDIENCE

Within this Pan-go is targeting the college age traveler.

Specifically:

Study abroad students

Students who have just graduated

Backpackers

The college age traveler has the right attitude, the need

and fits in with our company’s vision.

Attitude: They are flexible, open to trying new things, and

want to explore.

Need: They have the need because they want to find

smart ways of saving money, and they are already familiar

with cultural exchange through student exchanges and

study abroad.

Vision: We want to foster a sense of curiosity about the

world in a way that builds perspective and will inform the

way they lead the rest of their lives. We envision these

young people becoming dedicated customers of Pan-

go as they grow up.

COMPETITORS

Skyara Like-a-Local STA Travel AirBnb Pan-go

Primary Offering

Potential weakness

Potential weakness

What customers value

What customers value

What customers value

San Francisco

peer-to-peer

experiences

Local

peer-to-peer

experiences

Travel agency for

student age

Person-to-person

places to stay

Network of local

experiences for

collage age

Having novel

experiences

Having otherwise

inaccessible

experiences

Worldwide Stay in cool

places

Save money

Meeting &

networking in San

Francisco

Meeting new

people in other

countries

Activities targeted

toward students

Save money Join a vibrant

community

Only in San

Francisco

Stagnant

offerings, spread

too thin

Prepackaged

tours

Security of

overnight stay

Unknown brand

Opportunities to

break from daily

life

Affordable prices Cheap prices,

discounts

Potentially meet

new people

Extensive offerings

in targeted

countries

Too expensive? No sense of

community

Age limit Maintaining

quality worldwide

Meeting

expectations

no network

engaged community

genericexperiences

uniqueexperiences

panoo

tour companies

POSITIONING

POSITIONING MAP

Pan-go is a vibrant community of smart, young world

travelers exchanging local genuine experiences.

POSITIONING STATEMENT

no network

engaged community

generic experiences

unique experiences

tour companies

Skyara and airbnb are not direct competitors;

they do not offer travel experiences.

They are business models Pan-go used as

successful examples.

WEBSITE

HOME PAGE

TRAVEL OFFER COMMUNITY sign in sign up

CATEGORIES

Pan-go is a vibrant community of smart, young world travelers exchanging local genuine experiences.

Share authentic experiences...

Join our Community

Offer the ultimate, unique experience you can think of with the pan-go community. There will be voting and some extra pan-go points for the best ideas. Yes, this is definitely a competition!!

get creative with your culture

Offer an Experience

HIGHEST RATED NEW

Art Beauty & StyleCrafts & HobbiesEducationFood & DrinkHealth & WellnessHistory & CultureNightlifeOutdoorsShoppingSports & FitnessTechnology

Where do you want to go?

Pan-go experiences...

SEARCH

Learn to curse in Italian over futbol & beerwith Gio Venessi

$20.00Rome/ITALY

A bike tour around Notting Hill with storieswith Damien Jones

$30.00London/UK

Make crepes in father’s family restaurantwith Marie LaCroix

$28.00Paris/FRANCE

I have anIDEA

The Pan-go home page displays the newest and highest

rated experiences being offered. The customer can

browse through the experiences or search by city or

category.

TRAVEL OFFER COMMUNITY sign in sign up

CATEGORIES

Offer an Experience

HIGHEST RATED NEW

Art Beauty & StyleCrafts & HobbiesEducationFood & DrinkHealth & WellnessHistory & CultureNightlifeOutdoorsShoppingSports & FitnessTechnology

Paris, FRANCE

Pan-go experiences

SEARCH

The coffee au lait that changed my lifewith Julien Beaudoin

$15.00Paris/FRANCE

Taste the top 5 French foods you can eat with your handswith Sophie Carrier

$35.00Paris/FRANCE

Paris/FRANCE Food & Drink

Make crepes in father’s family restaurantwith Marie LaCroix

$28.00Paris/FRANCE

Once the customer enters in the city/category they are

looking for, they are taken to experiences that fit with

their search options.

Each offering is shown through a photo, the name of the

experience and the provider, the city and country names

and the price.

For further details, the customer will click on the

experience photo or name. Users can also click on the

provider’s name to see the profile of that person.

WEBSITE

EXPERIENCE PAGE

A person must be registered on the website before they

can make a booking or become a provider.

When a customer decides to join the Pan-go community,

they can do so through their Facebook account or

through e-mail.

PROFILE PAGE

Providers and customers alike have profiles that are

simple to build and update, with photos, reviews, their

own unique stories, friends and followers.

BUSINESS MODEL

FLOW CHART

Money

Service

Experience

SAFETY ISSUESPan-go will create accountability through easy to build

profile and experience pages and a ratings and rewards

system. Our goal is to have a richly populated website

that will give customers and providers the information

they need to make informed and smart decisions about

whether or not they want to make or accept a booking.

Pan-go will also enable travelers and experience providers

to communicate privately through the company, without

revealing any personal information, before a booking is

made. The credit card information of both parties will be

in the Pan-go system before any transaction takes place,

to confirm their legitimacy.

After a booking is made, both parties will receive each

other’s phone numbers and names to get in touch before

meeting.

Ultimately, the liability will be on the customers about the

issue of security. Pan-go is not responsible for monitoring

the meet-ups.

MONEY SECURITYPan-go has a confirmation system, where the company

holds on to the traveler’s money until the meet-up has

taken place. The travelers will be e-mailed a code before

the meet-up, which they will give to the experience

provider. This code must be entered into the Pan-go

system for the money to be transferred to the provider.

If customers are unsatisfied for any reason, they can call

our customer service and full refunds will be given when

deemed appropriate.

CUSTOMER JOURNEY MAP

TOUCHPOINTS

CONSIDER

• posters

• college events

• website

EVALUATE

• travel blogger network

• special parties

• experience provider profile

PURCHASE

• website

• email

ENJOY, ADVOCATE & BOND

• rating & review system

• website

• follow up recommendations

• email newsletter

DESCRIPTION

An example journey map of a potential customer Sara...

CONSIDER

Sara hears about Pan-go from posters on campus, sees

a booth at a college event at her school. Her friends are

talking about it, and she also sees someone mention it in

their Facebook status. She clicks over to the website to

check it out briefly, and sees some cool experiences. She

fantasizes traveling one day to one of these places and

having one of these experiences.

EVALUATE

Sara is going on a trip to France. She remembers Pan-go

and the idea of an experience sharing website abroad.

She starts to do research on other experience websites

like Airbnb, and Like-a-local, as well as looking at Lonely

Planet, other tour guide books and STA travel. She sees

that Like-a-local does not have many offerings, Airbnb is

just for overnight stays, and STA travel and guide books

look impersonal and too touristy. She talks to one of her

friends who is a travel blogger who’s gone to one of

DESCRIPTION

Pan-go’s special events, the friend talks about his Pan-go

experience.

Now she goes on the website and sees a bunch of

cool experiences in the area she will travel to. She’s a

big foodie and sees that someone is offering a crepe

learning session in her father’s family restaurant. She sees

that there are good reviews for the experience. She then

looks at the profile of the experience provider, Marie, who

has a lot of friends vouching for her. It is right in Sara’s

price range, so she decides to register.

PURCHASE

Sara messages Marie through the website to ask more

about the experience and to figure out a date. Marie

messages back and offers a specific day. This works for

Sara so she books the experience and goes through a

secure payment system. She receives the purchase code

and an explanation through e-mail.

ENJOY, ADVOCATE & BOND

Sara travels to Paris and gets a reminder e-mail for her

upcoming experience. She meets up with Marie and

has an excellent time. She gives the purchase code to

Marie (necessary for Marie to receive her payment from

Pan-go). Pan-go sends her a follow up e-mail to rate

her experience and gives her the opportunity to link to

Marie’s profile. She gives great ratings and writes a nice

review for Marie.

After having great experiences that have made her trip

memorable, she decides to go on the website in order to

keep in touch with her new friends. She builds up her profile

through continued experiences, and maintains links to all

of her providers. She gets follow up recommendations

from Pan-go based on her previous bookings. She goes

back home and gets a newsletter telling her about the

advantages of being a provider. The newsletter lets her

know what travelers are looking for in her home city.

She sees one that she can easily provide and signs up

to offer it. Now she is an active participant in the Pan-go

community and a vocal advocate.

CUSTOMER JOURNEY MAP

BRAND STYLE

BRAND ATTRIBUTES

adventurous authentic

trustworthy vibrant

smart cultural connection

BRAND COLORS

BRAND FONTS

Century Gothic

LOGO

COMPANY GROWTH

PLAN OF ACTIONPan-go has a three-phase plan of action.

Alpha-Phase

In the alpha phase Pan-go will target the top 5 study

abroad countries: US, UK, France, Italy, and Spain.

The 4 founding members will tap into their own personal

international networks in these places to get things

started. Combined they have access to 25 networks in

each of these countries and can reach 28,000 friends

and friends-of-friends.

Beta-Phase

Once 100 providers have posted experiences on the

Pan-go website, the beta-phase will start. In this phase

the company will grow its customer and provider base

simultaneously. At the end of beta-phase, there will be

250 providers that have joined the Pan-go community.

Launch

The Pan-go website will open to the public after the 250

provider number has been met.

FUTURE PROJECTIONSPan-go’s future projections are based on the numbers of

similar business models (i.e. AirBnb).

End of Year One

1,000 providers

25,000 customers

45,000 experiences booked in total

End of Year Two

4,500 providers

MARKETING

PRICING STRATEGYPan-go will take a 15% commission from each money

transaction between our partners, the experience

providers, and our customers, the travelers.

Pan-go aims to offer experiences at an affordable price

for the college-age savvy traveler. There will be a $100

price cap on all experiences posted on the site. For

offerings that last longer than one day, the price cap will

be $100 per day.

The prices will be set by the experience providers along

some guidelines and recommendations.

• The recommended price for non-skill based

experiences such as walking tours, spending time

together will be around 20$.

• The recommended price for experiences involving

food & drink, going to multiple venues will be around

30-35$.

• The recommended price for skill-based experiences

like cooking classes or photography lessons will be

around 40-50$, but would vary according to materials

provided.

• Our partners will be informed that there is an

opportunity to provide a discounted price for groups.

PLACEMENTWEBSITE

The main place our customers interact with the business is

our online platform. We want to have an easy to access

site with enough storage to make it easy for travelers

and experience providers to upload and download

data. With our estimated growth projections, we will

need approximately 1319 gigabytes of storage for one

year that breaks down to 50 megabytes for each profile.

(26,000 customers & providers at the end of year one) For

providing such storage we will use amazon’s EBS service.

We estimate around $2,650 of cost for one-year storage.

We will hire a SEO to make sure our ranking is relevantly

high in searching the following words on the search

engines:

Back Packer – inexpensive travel- local – experience-

learn about city- genuine travelling– non tourist– must

experience in city - best places to see traveling- travel

like a local- eat like a local- local view – cultural

understanding – authentic

PLACEMENTSOCIAL MEDIA

Facebook, Tweeter & Youtube

Pan-go will have presence in each of the social media

sites to generate traffic into our website.

Facebook and Twitter will be utilized to push content

out about the promotions, creative ideas, unique

experiences, insider information about cities and other

useful information. People will also be able to use their

Facebook accounts to join Pan-go with one click.

A YouTube channel will be created for our providers and

customers to post videos for the ongoing promotional

competition. This will be a great touch point to learn

about Pan-go from its own community.

BLOG

Pan-go will have a tumbler account with focus on

interesting stories generated by hosts or travelers. This is

the primary place to promote the marketing campaign

“GET CREATIVE WITH YOUR CULTURE” The blog will have

links to Pan-go’s YouTube channel. The blog is in service of

recording unique or remarkable experiences. It focuses

on travel and the richness the world has to offer.

PHONE PRESENCE

We will have a strong phone-based customer support.

Our representatives will be available to answer questions

and address complaints.

PARTNERSHIPS

Pan-go sees opportunity in partnering with NGOs and

local communities. This specifically gathers providers that

have already shown their enthusiasm in their area.

Pan-go will also be partnering with youth hostels. Since

youth hostels are the most economic places to go for

the college age travelers, we will tie our information on

hostel.com, offering economical authentic experiences.

MARKETING

PROMOTION“GET CREATIVE WITH YOUR CULTURE”

Pan-go will be launching a campaign called: “Get

Creative with your Culture”

The idea is that young people are infinitely creative,

they are living embodiments of their own culture and are

always thinking of fun things to do. All they need is the

tools and the motivation to come back with astounding

ideas.

This is a call to action: we want people to post videos or

pictures of creative experiences they are willing to offer

that are unique to their culture (however they choose to

define ‘their culture’). The winner of the competition will

be awarded two free tickets to any pan-go city and any

number of pan-go experiences they can fit into one 24

hour period.

We will get the word out about the “Get Creative with

your Culture” campaign through social media, as well as

in person during our visits to colleges.

MARKETING

ONGOING ENCOURAGEMENT

On our website, we plan to list ideas for free experiences

unique to specific locations.

Pan-go will also keep its users engaged in the community

through a rewards and rating system. People are

encouraged to build their profiles, comment and review

through a system of Pan-go points. Every good review

they receive, every helpful review they write, every

photo they upload earns them pan-go points. Points can

be cashed in for free Pan-go experiences. (150 Pan-go

points for one free Pan-go experience) Basically every

time they contribute, we give them something back.

And for the super users, people who are passionate about

their cities, they can rack up location specific points to

gain status as Pan-go ambassadors. People will compete

to gain status as the Pan-go ambassador to Madrid, for

example.

MARKETING

PROMOTIONTRAVEL BLOGGERS

There are a lot of travel blogs that are already trusted

and have good number of followers. Pan-go will be

reaching out to these bloggers, invite them to offer local

experiences and ask them to write about us on their blog.

SPREAD THE WORD

By writing articles, making short videos and posting on

websites such as crowdsourcing.org, Pan-go will make

an open call to a large undefined group of people

to participate in our competition to become a local-

experience-provider.

REACH OUT FOR STUDENTS

Pan-go will set up booths in college fairs to talk to students

about the experiences they can offer. We will hand

out brochures about our company, promote ourselves

through posters around campus

FINANCIALS

REVENUE PROJECTIONS

At the end of year one, with 1800 experiences booked

per week, Pan-go will generate $561,600 in revenue.

At the end of the second year, with an estimated growth

rate of 450%, the revenue generated is projected to

reach $3 million. With the projected revenue growth the

company’s annual income will increase from $68,000 to

$1.1 million.

Average price for an experience: $40.00

Percentage of the fee that will be paid to partners: $85

Growth rate: 450%

REVENUE

Experience Revenue

Partner Revvenue

Company Revenue

SERVICE COSTS

Hosting Costs

Transaction fees

OVERHEAD COSTS

Salaries & Admin

Marketing

Partner Relations

Support

Total Costs

ANNUAL INCOME

Est. Startup Costs

YEAR ONE

$3,744,000

$3,182,400

$561,600

$2,650

$74,880

$196,560

$84,240

$67,392

$67,392

$493,114

$68,486

$124,675

YEAR TWO

$20,592,000

$17,503,200

$3,088,800

$10,600

$411,840

$617,760

$308,880

$247,104

$370,656

$1,966,840

$1,121,960

ANNUAL BUDGET

FINANCIALS

BUDGET DISTRIBUTION: YEAR ONE BUDGET DISTRIBUTION: YEAR TWO

Salary & Administrative Fees: 35%

Marketing: 15%

Partner Relations: 12%

Support: 12%

Salary & Administrative Fees: 20%

Marketing: 10%

Partner Relations: 8%

Support: 12%