Prior to her freelance career she covered hotels and technology news for Travel Trade Gazette for se

When Outski founder Greg Nikolson was hit with the stark realisation that a dream trip to Europe was not going to happen for a long time because of his young family, hawaii travel deals he decided to go ahead and plan it anyway.
The startup is also working with a number of advisors hawaii travel deals including Andrew Lombard, chairman at eTelemetry and CEO at SocialWhirled , Tate Brown, CFO of SocialWhirled and Krista Pappas, hawaii travel deals former global hawaii travel deals head of business development of Bing Travel.
The startup is initially targeting US Millennials who enjoy travel don t have the financial means to instantaneously book travel. There are 80 million Millenials representing 25% of the US population and with an annual buying power of more than $200 billion.
Vacation hawaii travel deals Savings Accounts – the startup earns interchange each time a user spends money using an Outski Travel Savings Card, approximately 1.5% of the total transaction. Interchange fees originate from the merchant over the acceptance network (i.e. Discover, hawaii travel deals VISA).
Big Data – imagine a travel hawaii travel deals marketing database, updated regularly by millions of users providing forward-looking data, not previously available, that knows WHEN people want to travel, WHERE they want to go, WHY they want to go, WHO they want to go with, WHAT they want to do when they are there, and HOW MUCH MONEY they are planning on spending.
Fundamentally, it solves two problems. First, people always talk about taking trips, but they rarely come to fruition. Why? We have found that the top three reasons are no time (or they believe they have no time), have not planned it or, do not have the money to take the trip.
Second, a survey commissioned by Hotwire in early 2013 discovered that the typical American worker let 9.2 paid vacation days slip away in 2012, a 48 percent increase from the previous year. In fact, the number of unused paid vacation days increased to 12 by the end of 2013.
Luckily, our platform helps consumers hawaii travel deals solve these problems by providing travel hawaii travel deals related financial services to consumers together with associated group planning and social collaboration tools in order to facilitate coordination and planning of their travel with friends and family.
We were originally going to require users to book their travel with us, but then realized we were creating this site for consumers, not Outski. We did a huge pivot and decided to let our users spend their saved funds however they wanted. While we hope that they will use it for travel, nothing stops them from walking across hawaii travel deals the street and using their Travel Savings Card to buy something like groceries for example. They can use their saved funds where ever Visa/Discover is accepted. They can even pull cash from an ATM as it works just like their existing debit/credit hawaii travel deals card.
In developing our marketing plan, we initially thought that we would focus much of our marketing resources on developing B2C relationships. While this is still a large portion of our initial marketing (in order to increase brand awareness) we have developed a B2B solution called 401(play)™.
Now, one of the primary methods of encouraging our target audience to participate in using our technology is by marketing our 401(play)™ program. This program allows employers to enhance their benefits package and improve employee morale by enabling personnel to contribute a portion of their paychecks to their Vacation Savings Account.
hawaii travel deals The motivation behind this program is that it improves morale, reduces stress and employee burnout and is a unique offering in a benefit package hawaii travel deals that will allow employers a measurable way to contribute to their employee’s performance and welfare.
The bottom line is that we are solving 12 problems (the days not taken) and employees get that “refresh” that makes them healthier and more productive (as well as reducing burn-out). hawaii travel deals We believe that this benefit results in a “win-win” for employers and businesses.
To acquire early adaptor users, three main marketing thrusts that will target Millennials, including parents, women, and college students. These thrusts will consist hawaii travel deals of social media, internal marketing, and external marketing initiatives:
Multimedia Videos: Advice Interactive Group will facilitate production of videos intended to promote awareness of Outski, explain the features and benefits of the platform, and to create excitement about the site. These videos will appear on the website or Youtube.
Outski’s largest sustained initiative lies in a B2B solution called 401(play)™. This program will initially target small to mid-sized firms and progress to large / Fortune 500 companies by leveraging existing personal relationships and relationships through current channel partners as well as industry events.
Pi Sigma Epsilon Sales Marketing Challenge: Ten PSE fraternities at US colleges and universities will each be awarded a $2,500 budget to develop a unique marketing campaign to promote Outski on their respective campuses. The winning hawaii travel deals fraternity of this 10-week challenge will be awarded hawaii travel deals $10,000. We know from experience that these fraternities have a need to raise money, and Outski’s Marketing Challenge not only provides them an opportunity to raise $10,000, but also provides an excellent real life, competitive marketing experience.
Channel Partners: establishing relationships with destination event sponsors such as Red Frog Events, Tough Mudder, and others that will enable them to provide their own past-event participants with travel packages and incentives to participate in upcoming events using Outski’s Channel Partner Portal.
In three years we expect to have a large international presence (note: currently, we can only offer Vacation Savings Accounts to US residents). We intend on making this a global product! Our challenges hawaii travel deals are directly hawaii travel deals related to this as we have to create new relationships with financial institutions in each country that we intend to penetrate.
Many people in our target market are used to just charging money on a credit card to travel and worrying about it later, hawaii travel deals or just foregoing it altogether. Those days are gone. We have created hawaii travel deals a financially responsible way to help people actually take those trips on a mobile and desktop platform that is convenient and easy to use.
We are pretty young and don’t really know this answer quite yet. Our mission is to help people live better lives by enabling them to travel. I am sure you have never heard that one from another start-up
This is an intriguing startup. Holidays have moved from being perceived as a luxury to being a necessity, even a right! And yet, they are one of the biggest outlays households make every year and require effort and emotion in terms of planning and catering for everyone.
So, Outski provides a place to go ahead and plan that holiday as well as a vehicle to start saving for it. It s marketing plans are far-reaching and clever from the B2B aspects and employee benefit packages to the university fraternity and social media elements.
It is also astute in targeting Millenials who may not have the money now but many will likely have the funds, not to mention desire, to see the world going forward. And, it taps into a time when people are still uncertain about the economy and financial security but hold onto the dream of travelling or use the funds for something else if needs be.
There are other interesting elements to Outski the big data play for example. Lots of companies are bandying words such as predictive and anticpatory around so a platform that holds intent married with a financial package could be seriously valuable.
The eternal problem of achieving scale remains and only going after only the US market initially could make it even trickier. Another potential issue is getting people to understand what it s all about save money for something hawaii travel deals I d like to do in three our four years time might not figure in the minds of a lot of Millenials living for the here and now.
Linda Fox is deputy editor for Tnooz. hawaii travel deals For the past six years she has worked as a freelance journalist across a range of B2B titles including Travolution, ABTA Magazine, Travelmole and the Business Travel Magazine.
Prior to her freelance career she covered hotels hawaii travel deals and technology news for Travel Trade Gazette for seven years. Linda joined TTG from Caterer Hotelkeeper where she worked on the features desk for more than five years.
I like the idea of putting money away in an FDIC insured Bank Account for trips. That way the vacation budget is set, and planed for. Also, if I travel with the card as my main source of money, then I can stay on budget and if I lose it or the information falls in the wrong hands, I will not worry about losing everything , so to speak.
I believe this will be a very useful tool for many households! You can do all your trip planning, including finding airfare, hotels, etc, saving the money and literally watch as the funds for your vacation add up to your goal amount. You can also plan more than one vacation at a time, and specify how the funds are divided, so you can have long range vacation goals, such as a world cruise, hawaii travel deals for example, several years down the road, along with saving and planning that vacation you re going to take to Disney World with the kids next summer.
You know, if someone can t plan a trip to Europe for a few years ahead without this sort of an app, then they are probably to daft to be allowed onto any aircraft. Now, let me see instead of actually using a bank and saving money (like any normal person would) you want me to give my money to this unbonded outfit and rely on them being around hawaii travel deals in five years time . Hmmmmm . Ohhh! look a pink pig has just flown by my window
You are missing the point. If I am going to save money, I will save it in my bank and in my name. Not in your bank and in yours. That s why in the UK, we have bonding. Anyone hawaii travel deals can say they will put the money in such and such. If they actually do or not, is another matter.
For the record, these ARE accounts that are created in each individual Vacation Savings Account