This Travel Site Cuts Through Travel Confusion – World Travel Index Startup Review

Dreaming about your next trip? Exciting, right? Then comes the planning. Suddenly, you’re in a jungle of travel websites and apps. Every site shouts about the ‘best deals’ and ‘insider tips.’ Reviews? They’re everywhere and often say totally different things.

Trying to figure out if a place is safe and if it fits your budget feels like guesswork. Right now, many of you are spending hours lost in this travel confusion. Jumping between sites, trying to make sense of it all.

But what if it could be easier? What if clear, reliable info about destinations was all in one spot? That’s what the World Travel Index is building. They’re tackling travel confusion head-on. Making it simpler to find your perfect spot. We interviewed the founder to see how they do it.

What is World Travel Index?

World Travel Index is a platform designed to make travel planning seamless. It helps you find the next best destination that matches your preferences and budget. Travel enthusiasts, digital nomads, and travel agents find value in this resource. The aim is to tackle the pressing issue of data transparency in travel.

How does it work? By collecting and analysing data, the platform merges user-generated content with editorial insights. Imagine having access to reliable, curated information all in one place. Instead of endless scrolling through disparate reviews, you get unified data that helps in making informed travel choices.

What sets the World Travel Index apart is the emphasis on accuracy and clarity. Unlike other platforms that throw raw data at you, this one educates and visualises information with widgets, maps, and tables. This approach helps demystify the overwhelming options, offering a clearer path to decision-making. The gap between curiosity and clarity narrows, simplifying the initial steps of your travel journey.

For many, the question isn’t just where to go, but how to decide. World Travel Index adds coherence to this decision-making process, sparing you from the chaos of conflicting information.

World Travel Index Founders

Meet Tom Abraham, the mind behind World Travel Index. With a career spanning global banking and insurance, especially in operations and IT, he took a turn that even he couldn’t have predicted. In 2015, his nomadic heart took flight, sparking an idea. While journeying across continents, he faced the chaos of travel planning firsthand. This experience planted the seeds for his startup.

Drawing from his professional background, Tom dove into every aspect of building his platform. Concept, design, user feedback, financials, and marketing—all these responsibilities rested on his shoulders. Only development was outsourced. The mission was simple yet challenging: streamline the traveller’s information jungle. After starting to build just before the pandemic hit, the journey was anything but smooth.

The early days were tough. Building began just two months before COVID-19 changed everything. Gathering user feedback? Almost impossible. Yet, Tom’s stubborn determination kept him going. He and his dev team pressed on, culminating in their first version launch in December 2023. The time in between was filled with relentless updates and a year-long focus on incorporating user feedback. It’s this sheer persistence that sets Tom and World Travel Index apart.

The origin story? Almost serendipitous. Tom’s personal travel hurdles turned into an enterprise focus. Understanding the need for transparent and unified travel data became his north star. With platforms like Numbeo and Wikivoyage offering fragmented data, there was a gap—a significant one. Tom seized the opportunity to create a unified resource that could serve travellers, nomads, and agents by providing clarity in choice.

Interview with Tom Abraham, Founder of World Travel Index

We got the chance to sit down with Tom Abraham, the founder of World Travel Index, to understand how they’re making travel planning less of a headache. Here’s what he had to say.

Q: Tom, tell us about yourself and World Travel Index. What is your role?
A: I’m Tom Abraham, founder of World Travel Index.

Q: And what exactly does World Travel Index do? Who is it for?
A: World Travel Index helps travellers find their next best destination based on their preferences and budget. It’s really for anyone planning a trip. Travel enthusiasts, digital nomads, and even travel agents can get value from it. We are focused on solving the problem of data transparency in travel.

Q: Data transparency in travel – can you explain what you mean by that?
A: Sure. When you’re planning a trip, you’re bombarded with information from all sorts of places. Reviews are everywhere, prices change constantly, and it’s hard to know what to trust. We collect and analyse travel data, and combine user-generated content with editorial insights. We want to give people reliable, curated information all in one spot, so they can make informed decisions without spending hours lost in research.

Q: Who is behind World Travel Index? Is it just you?
A: Yes, I am the single founder. My background is in global banking and insurance, mainly in operations and IT. For World Travel Index, I handle pretty much everything – concept, design, testing, user feedback, financials, marketing. Development is outsourced, but everything else is me.

Q: What made you decide to start World Travel Index? What was the inspiration?
A: It came from my own experience. I started travelling and living as a nomad in 2015. I kept running into the same problems. Conflicting travel advice, difficulty figuring out budgets, and just the sheer amount of time it took to plan a trip. I thought there had to be a better way.

Q: What were the early days like?
A: I started building World Travel Index just before Covid-19 hit. It was terrible timing in some ways. Travel stopped, so getting user feedback was almost impossible. It would have been easy to give up. But I was determined. I worked through Covid with the development team to build the platform. We launched our first version in December 2023. Looking back, I wish we had got user feedback earlier. Our initial focus might have been different. We spent a full year updating the platform based on user feedback. It’s much better now, thanks to those improvements.

Q: How is World Travel Index different from other travel platforms? What makes you stand out?
A: We really focus on being a unified place for travel information. We looked at the big players – Numbeo, Nomadlist, Wikivoyage, and others. They all have valuable data, but it’s often scattered. Our data is curated and checked, and so is our content. We want to avoid overwhelming users with raw data or complicated tools. We want to help travellers at the very first step, when they are just starting to think about a destination. We focus on educating and visualising information with widgets, maps and tables to make it easy to understand.

Q: Has World Travel Index received any funding?
A: No, we haven’t received external funding.

Q: What are your plans for the future?
A: For the next 6 to 12 months, our focus is purely on marketing and distribution. The last five years were all about product and platform development. Now we need to get the word out there.

Q: What about revenue? Can you share any numbers?
A: We just started making revenue. Right now, it’s around 200 USD per month.

Q: And how many users are you seeing?
A: We are averaging around 5,000 users per month.

Q: What kind of growth are you experiencing?
A: We are seeing about 500% year-on-year growth. But we are still very new. We just finished our beta phase a year ago.

Q: What have you learned on your startup journey? Any advice for aspiring entrepreneurs?
A: Being a founder takes stubbornness, persistence, and resilience. You need a lot of self-motivation and a strong belief in what you are doing. Don’t give up easily. Learn from setbacks, listen to feedback, and keep going. Once your product is built, marketing becomes crucial. And you have to be realistic. If you can’t make it profitable, consider pivoting or, if there’s no interest at all, be ready to move on to the next idea.

My advice for new entrepreneurs? If you have enough funds to survive for 12 months, go all in. That’s enough time to test things, and you won’t regret taking the leap. If you don’t have funds, work on a side project in your spare time. Focus on solving a small, real problem. ‘Painkillers’ – things people genuinely need – are always better than ‘vitamins’ – things you have to convince people they want.

Q: Are there any interesting statistics about the travel industry or your startup that you can share?
A: Yes, definitely. When people search for destinations, their priorities are usually: first, is it safe? Second, is it expensive? And third, is it worth visiting? All other questions come after these initial concerns are addressed. The online travel market is huge. It was already 600 billion USD in 2023 and it keeps growing as more people from developing countries start travelling. This growth in global travel creates a massive opportunity.

Feedough’s Take on World Travel Index

World Travel Index enters a busy market, no doubt. Plenty of travel sites exist. However, they are tackling a real problem: information overload. Think about it. Travellers are drowning in data but often lack clear, trustworthy insights. World Travel Index is trying to be that reliable source, and that’s smart. The focus on data accuracy and visualisation is a plus. They are not just throwing more information at users; they’re making it digestible.

For a startup, especially one launched just before a global pandemic, reaching 5,000 monthly users and showing 500% year-on-year growth is noteworthy. It shows resilience and a definite need for what they offer. Going forward, the challenge will be marketing and getting noticed. With travel picking up again, the timing could be perfect for them to scale. If they keep honing their platform based on user feedback and focus on clear, reliable data, World Travel Index could become a key resource for modern travellers.