Introducing Switchfly GO feat. Nowell Outlaw, CEO

Welcome to Travel Buddy

In this episode of the Travel Buddy podcast, hosted by Switchfly, the focus is on how travel benefits can enhance employee satisfaction and wellness.

Key points include:

1. Importance of Travel as a Benefit: Travel is positioned as a wellness benefit, similar to health care and pet insurance. It provides significant mental health benefits, offering employees the opportunity to take meaningful breaks and recharge.

2. Differentiation for Employers: Offering travel perks can differentiate employers in a competitive job market. It's especially appealing to younger generations who value experiences and travel.

3. Complexity and Technology: Providing travel benefits involves complex technology, numerous vendors, and inventory management. Switchfly offers dynamic packaging and comprehensive support, including a call center, to streamline this process for employers.

4. Ease of Implementation: Switchfly's "Go" product allows employers to offer travel benefits with minimal IT effort. The platform can be set up quickly, allowing employees to start using it almost immediately.

5. Machine Learning: Switchfly uses machine learning to personalize travel recommendations based on user preferences, similar to how Netflix suggests content. This enhances the user experience by offering tailored travel options.

6. Business Benefits: For employers, providing travel benefits can increase employee motivation and loyalty. It's an attractive perk that can improve overall job satisfaction and retention.

7. Customer Support: Emphasizing the importance of excellent customer service, Switchfly ensures that employees have access to a dedicated call center for travel-related issues, enhancing their travel experience.

The episode highlights how integrating travel benefits can be a powerful tool for employee engagement and wellness, offering significant advantages for both employees and employers.

Transcript

employers are thinking about what kind of things should we do for employees? If you think about the things that are offered to an employee now. There’s wellness programs, you know, there’s even pet insurance is offered by employers through people to get pet insurance. 

 

We consider travel, leisure travel as a benefit. So just like you think about having health care, having your pet insurance, having those wellness programs, I would put employees taking travel and having a vacation benefit as a wellness program, as a mental health wellness. Being able to take a break for a week and have this thing, you know, go to Hawaii for a week and you’re getting it at a discount or whatever.

 

Your employer has offered you a reward. That, Hey, here’s an, here’s 250 off, go spend it and go take a trip. You will get, you know, that mental health benefit is huge. And so that’s why we’re rolling this out to employers and the benefit they get from it is, you know, people are a little bit more motivated to work at places where they get rich and exciting things.

 

And it’s, you know, it’s a differentiator for an employer for sure.

 

   📍 📍 📍 Welcome to Travel Buddy, presented by Switchfly. In this podcast, we talk about all things travel, rewards, and loyalty. Let’s get to it. 

 

  📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 welcome to the show, Nowell. We have you as a guest. I am so excited to talk to you today because you are the CEO of Switchfly. So you’ve got all kinds of knowledge about travel, about Switchfly, about why any of this matters. And so I think that’s actually a really good place to start. When we’re talking about travel, why is that so important?

 

For employees, employers, what is this landscape that you’re in the middle of, you know, there’s rewards, there’s recognition, there’s, just all kinds of dynamics that are at play for the way organizations are hiring, retaining, getting engagement with their employees, and travel is a really great antidote to that.

 

So tell me a little bit about that. 

 

Um, so, you know, switch fly has been in this industry for 20 years, right. And I, I actually was not in the travel industry. So I came from venture capital backed, you know, Silicon Valley machine learning before machine learning was, was super popular like it is now. And, you know, when you’re in Silicon Valley and you have people who are PhDs working for you.

 

And you have companies like Google who are literally trying to recruit from your company because they want your talent. You have to do things that are different. Right. And I think a lot of employers are looking for things that are different. And the interesting thing about even the employee base that I had then, a lot of people travel.

 

They go to really cool places and they do really interesting things. And so, you know, in this journey and evolution and kind of a switchfly as a company, you know, we’ve looked at employees and we’ve We’ve done a couple of things. One of the things is we did a survey. And we surveyed about 2500 people and, you know, travel actually came out at almost number one of a benefit.

 

So if you’re an employer and you’re trying to recruit people, Everyone predominantly has health insurance, dental vision, life, you know, all that kind of stuff. And so it becomes, how are you differentiating yourself to an employee? Like, what makes you Mr. Employer fun and different? And like, yeah, you know what?

 

I’m really wanting to go to work there. Now, not all jobs are that way. Employees and employers have this relationship over time and working in a place that’s fun, I think is important. For recruiting people, millennials, people out of college. All those kind of younger generation people we know travel is a big part of their life.

 

Right. You can see it in any kind of industry report that you have. Um, and you can see that it’s like, number one, I want to travel. I want to visit places. I want to see the world, have an employer that has a program to match those desires is a good thing that we’ve found. 

 

Now, it seems like from, from what I’ve, I’ve understand, understood from the team is, is sounds really nice, you know, ad travel. But from what I’m gathering, it is really difficult to pull that off. It is super complex. There’s a lot of technology. There’s a lot of vendors. There’s a lot of suppliers. There’s, you know, there’s the inventory.

 

You guys have hotels, car, planes, all of that. But you guys have created this kind of dynamic packaging and you’ve created some, some other tools that kind of put all this together into one package, including a call center, if I’m not

 

Correct. Correct. So really.

 

me a little bit about the landscape there.

 

Yeah. So switchfly, you know, um, my CFO, you know, we always talk about the competition and the market and the things, and, you know, you’re not just going to go out, be a startup and become a travel company. There is a huge moat to cross when you consider all the things that have to be done.

 

The interesting thing about that is if you call up, uh, to be a merchant of record, to process a credit card and you call up the big processors. Hey, I want to. Process a credit card. It’s great until they say the checkbox. It says what industry you’re in and you check travel. And then all of a sudden they’re like, um, you know, let me call you back.

 

Right? And so then you call your next merchant processor and say, Hey, I’m going to process travel. Let me call you back. Right? We went through numerous merchant processors. And we’re a 20 year old company. That does travel for a living. That Processes cards for American Express, and we struggled to find a merchant processor that would accept us to process travel credit card transactions.

 

It’s in the same category. I think it’s easier if you’re a drug dealer selling drugs and swiping credit cards than actually get travel. And so the interesting thing is like, there’s this whole, I mean, switchfly is a, you know, travel e commerce and basically. platform for people. Not only is it the tech, but it’s also the people.

 

So we have a call center. They answer questions. You know, if you get stuck somewhere, we can reroute flights or adjust your flights, rebook you a new hotel rooms. We do all of that for people. Um, and the interesting thing is that, you know, an employer specifically, when you start talking to them about things, they They don’t want to take on a big I.

 

1. project. I. T. resources are rare, you know, walking in and saying, you know, let’s let’s take on this three month project or six month project. They just don’t want to do that. So. You know, we built something that basically think and act like a startup, think and act like a sass company. Basically, less than a day.

 

If you go and register, we can turn you on almost instantly. And employees can start registering and using the system. There is no back end configuration, back end integration, you know, things that you have to do in a typical I. T. Um, implementation to use switch fly.

 

Mm. Amazing. And, you know, like they say, like simplicity to be elegant is extremely difficult. Uh, and you guys have have tried to make it as a simple, um, process is as anybody out there and from what I gather, you’re making it even a step easier with a new product that you guys are launching called go and this is this is to shift the dynamics a little bit, even toward signing up teams.

 

immediately more of a direct to employer offering if I’m understanding you. So can you tell me a little bit about that while you guys are

 

Sure. So, you know, this actually, I’ll, I’ll attribute this to a large part to my wife. But, but, you know, it’s, um, I want to bring leisure travel, not, you know, there’s the whole business side and, you know, your credit card, you have to travel for work. And go is designed specifically for employers to offer basically travel as a perk or travel as a benefit right from we offer kind of member only rates through this program and so you will have discounts lower than you’ll see at the retail sites.

 

Right? So everyone does this. This cost comparison, our rates basically are, um, discounted. But we use, you know, the same, like we have over a million hotels. We have car rentals, we have air, we have activities. Through Viator and people like that. Um, but it’s done at a discount through your employer.

 

So the, the idea is, you know, employers can sign up for free. There’s no cost right for people to do this and employees can register and use the site site for free and effectively it’s white labeled and it’s, um, it’s in a closed network. So a membership kind of program, and that way they have access to these member only rates right to be able to book and reward their employees with travel.

 

The interesting thing is, it’s not just the platform, it’s also also the service and support. That comes with it. So, you know, you’re not just buying a piece of software. If that employee is on a trip and has a problem with the hotel, they have a dedicated call center that they can call. So think of, you know, offering to your employees, like an American express concierge kind of travel service as a leisure travel benefit.

 

That’s really what goes about. 

 

I want to emphasize that point. I think cause you can easily overlook that. Like, Oh, there’s this, you know, call center or concierge that you can reach out to, but when you’re overseas and you run into a problem that it becomes a lifeline. I’m, I’m an American express platinum card holder and I, I was in London a few weeks ago.

 

My daughter got sick in the middle of the night. It’s like two 30 in the morning. Thankfully, we were able to connect with our doctor, but my next call was going to be to American Express to just like, Hey, what do I do? I don’t know what it’s two 30 in the morning. I can’t go anywhere. Do I call NHS? How do I do this?

 

You know, they were going to be my next call. And I think that’s really, really key.

 

Yeah. And it’s, you know, customer service in travel is you have to pay attention to it. There’s lots of people that the customer service aspect is an afterthought. Oh, you know, they’re really focused on being a tech company and not kind of a travel e-commerce vendor. And we really pay attention to the customer service side of it, you know, to measure our satisfaction scores and make sure that to the employee, they’re having the best experience that they can.

 

that they can have. Um, you know, I’ve traveled the world. I’ve driven my car through South America. You know, I’ve been to Africa. I’ve been to Europe, you know, taking kids, been sick, you know, had to find the doctor, shown up and not had a hotel like available, done all of those bad things. Um, and for me, it’s trying to help people avoid all of that stuff because it’s when, when travel goes bad and some like, you know, Um, you know, having a family member sick or whatever, it becomes really hard, really fast to understand what to do.

 

Right. And, um, you know, especially if you have to get out. Right. And that’s the other thing is, you know, If things go bad and I have to get out of here, how do I do that as quickly as possible? And, you know, sometimes like when you just call the airline or you just call the hotel or you just call whatever, it’s really hard for that person to have a picture of what is happening to you.

 

And a lot of times they may not care. Right. And in our case, Our job is really as, as a travel agent to help you, you know, get back to your destination, to make sure that the hotel does what they do or take care of the air carrier for you. 

 

Yeah. Amazing. I like what you said. It gets bad really fast. I

 

It does. It does. And then it’s, you know, my wife last year, she and I were, were hiking the Camino de Santiago and in Spain and Portugal, and she got very sick at the end. And let me tell you, like, Having to take a bus when you’re not feeling well, and then having to catch a three a. m. flight when you’re really not feeling well when we got home on Sunday, I had to take her the urgent care.

 

They put three liters of fluid into her because she was so dehydrated. Right? So I’ve been there, done that. There’s a lot of things to pay attention to. 

 

Definitely. Okay. I want to challenge you here with a few minutes that we have left as we close, there’s two things I want to make sure that we. That you could maybe briefly just simplify for me one is how does go use machine learning to create the kind of package that you know, you get these deals or the offerings that somebody would be presented with?

 

And then the second thing is, maybe you can, you can segue into is how, what, what is some of the business that you’re Benefits for an employer to sign up for this, that that may not be so, um, obvious that maybe the mechanics of the gift card industry or other kind of ways to do for boards that are not as clear. 

 

Um, So first thing, machine learning, uh, we do machine learning naturally. I, I actually think that the first person, when I came here as a CEO, the first job requisition that we opened was a head of data science. Because I’ve come from that world and I understand what it can do. Right. And one of the things we built is what we call it, uh, uh, C360.

 

So as a user uses the platform, right. We learn about. What they like. So if you don’t like to take 7 a. m. flights, like my CFO does, and you’re the 10 a. m. flight person, or you’re the afternoon flight person, it actually starts to learn what you like and make recommendations on things. Same thing with hotels.

 

If you’re looking for hotels, and you happen to be looking at hotels with swimming pools, we might make recommendations for more hotels with swimming pools. Um, it’s not necessarily, you know, you think about, A lot of hotel search and things are like, click the checkbox and we have those things, but behind the scenes, there’s a lot of machine learning.

 

That’s learning what you like. It might make recommendations that are better than you’re even thinking about the analogy that I use for people is one of Netflix because everybody, quite frankly, uses Netflix. If you’re an action adventure person and you just got done watching your latest action adventure movie, Netflix is not going to give you a rom com.

 

All right, they’re going to give you an action adventure movie as your next feed. Hotels are the same way, right, or flights or things. If you’re a non stop flight person and a five star hotel person, it doesn’t make any sense for us to give you a two stop flight with a three star hotel. And so there’s a lot of things that we do behind the scenes to actually suggest that for people, and it’s tailored to them without, you know, breaking any of the data privacy things and all that other stuff.

 

So.

 

Amazing, amazing, very cool. Okay. 

 

So, and then the next question was about an employer. So one, you know, employers are thinking about what kind of things should we do for employees? If you think about the things that are offered to an employee now. There’s wellness programs, you know, there’s even pet insurance is offered by employers through people to get pet insurance. 

 

We consider travel, leisure travel as a benefit. So just like you think about having health care, having your pet insurance, having those wellness programs, I would put employees taking travel and having a vacation benefit as a wellness program, as a mental health wellness. Being able to take a break for a week and have this thing, you know, go to Hawaii for a week and you’re getting it at a discount or whatever.

 

Your employer has offered you a reward. That, Hey, here’s an, here’s 250 off, go spend it and go take a trip. You will get, you know, that mental health benefit is huge. And so that’s why we’re rolling this out to employers and the benefit they get from it is, you know, people are a little bit more motivated to work at places where they get rich and exciting things.

 

And it’s, you know, it’s a differentiator for an employer for sure. 

 

Amazing. Amazing. No, thank you for this episode. So glad you’re a guest and I’m excited to keep this rolling.

 

Okay. Thanks. All right. Cheers.