With the CheckYeti team growing so fast, recruiting must be one of your priorities. Do you hire only people with crazy downhill skiing skills?
If you’re an avid skier, that’s certainly a plus (laughs). We actually do have three team members that have a ski instructor certification, and some others have worked as ski instructors previously. This knowledge certainly helps those in a customer-facing role. But we wouldn’t want to make skiing skills a prerequisite.

What kind of competences do you plan to hire in 2019?
We want to strengthen our marketing team, build the brand and deepen ties with hotel booking platforms and tour operators. We are always looking for developers. Since we plan to aggressively grow our summer business this year and reach out to new geographies, we also need more people in business development.

CheckYeti is a website and an app, why do you need people that still go out and spread the message?
Because the providers in skiing, paragliding, rafting, canyoning etc. are quintessentially local businesses. We go out and talk to them, sometimes have a beer together, explain what we do, especially in markets and regions where we just started out. To meet our local partners, we travel deep into the valleys. Since CheckYeti is a first mover in outdoor activities, we have much education to do but also learn a great deal from our providers about their business and their region. In locations where we already established a strong presence, it becomes much easier to onboard new providers. Compared to the providers, the end customer market is very international. So we’re not just touring mountain valleys. We are also present at, say, a tourism fair in London.

Speaking of the providers, are there any regions or valleys that absolutely don’t want to work with CheckYeti?
Most of the outdoor providers realize quite rapidly that it is an advantage for them to join CheckYeti. They are aware that they compete with other regions, and this is true not only for summer activities. Guests often choose where to stay according to the quality of the ski school or the variety of activities a region offers.

“Guests often choose where to stay according to the quality of the ski school or the variety of activities a region offers.”

Do you see big differences between the countries CheckYeti is active in?
Booking behavior varies a lot. For UK or German customers, for example, it is very common to book a ski instructor online, in other countries not yet. What is important for us is to understand each and every market we’re active in. This, in turn, means that we have a very international team with members from every market we serve.

Your team is based in Vienna. How is the startup ecosystem there evolving?
It has developed quite strongly in recent years. To work for a startup has become fashionable, which has made recruiting easier, also to find trainees straight from university. It seems like there is also more money available for startup financing than a few years ago. And lastly, now there is a number of startup success stories in Austria which means that there are highly driven entrepreneurs to meet and to discuss with.

What are new countries you have added recently?
We added Italy, Czech Republic and Poland, all with websites in local language. For summer outdoor activities we added Croatia and Slovenia. And Spain is new as well, for summer and winter activities.

Will you be adding new activities in the future?
In spring and summer 2019 we will add 9 new activity categories on CheckYeti in existing but also in multiple new destinations.

Do you look at markets outside Europe?
Japan is a huge winter and summer outdoor market, so are the US and Canada, and China is developing rapidly. At the moment, CheckYeti’s focus is still on Europe, we still have lots of room to grow here. But we’re open for new adventures, like our customers.

How many users does CheckYeti have?
We reached the milestone of 2 million users on our website and app in the current 6 months period. We have signed up more than 1,000 outdoor providers in 11 European countries, offering around 8,500 activities on CheckYeti.

When you look at the outdoor providers that already have worked three or four seasons with CheckYeti, what importance do online bookings have for them?
Customers’ booking behaviour is moving online and mobile at a very fast pace. Our top providers make already a sizeable junk of their bookings via CheckYeti. This can be 500 and more bookings per season for one provider.

CheckYeti recently announced an agreement with Skiset, the largest ski equipment rental company in Europe. How does this partnership evolve?
From a customer’s perspective, equipment rental is a very important point. Because if you book a ski school, chances are very high that you don’t own the equipment yourself. The actual number is as high as 70%, showing how complementary these two offers are. We see that our partner converts the leads made through us with an astonishingly high conversion rate, so this is evolving rather well. Of course it goes both ways – they are also sending us their customers to book a ski school on CheckYeti.

Why did you launch ski lesson gift cards?
This is something many of our users have asked us, and they are a novelty. They make a nice Christmas or birthday present, because they can be used in more than 500 different ski resorts. The largest gift card amount we sold so far to a single customer was 900 CHF.

I assume that people who book a ski instructor are familiar with skiing, but with your summer activities like rafting, is there a large number of customers that just want to try that out?
We have the aspect of trying something new also in winter, with kids that stand on their skis for the first time. But you’re right, this is more pronounced in the summer activities. And this is one of the beauties of bundling these offers together on one platform, because we see a large potential for cross-selling. Imagine that you go on vacation in summer and then can try out different things in the vicinity in the same week.

How do you make your end customers aware of CheckYeti’s offering?
We were working hard on increasing organic traffic to our website and have invested heavily in content creation. On www.checkyeti.com/blog we publish very specific and relevant content, articles like the top 5 spots to go rafting in Bavaria or the most beautiful ski kindergardens for kids in the Alps. Secondly, we have built partnerships with large portals like bergfex.com, accommodation portals or tour operators that sell outdoor activities as additional product. The third channel are paid posts on Google and Facebook. One of our recent successes is that CheckYeti is mentioned in all confirmations that SBB send out when someone buys a “Snow and Rail” package.

Let’s also speak about challenges. Looking back, when you consider the assumptions in your business plan, where did you err most?
What we hear from investors is that we set well thought-through goals and achieve them. But what is quite challenging is our business model as a marketplace that brings two very different groups together, providers and end-customers. We have to grow these two camps in each and every region in parallel.

Do you fear that a big competitor might appear in your space?
The local activities’ and attractions’ market has become a hot topic in recent years. Big players like tripadvisor, expedia, booking.com or airbnb have started to build dedicated divisions to enter this very attractive segment. In the outdoor activities’ space you need to build a brand that the providers trust, and you need to build that trust over time. It’s not like you could just throw millions at this market and outcompete CheckYeti easily.

“The local activities’ and attractions’ market has become a hot topic in recent years. “

Since CheckYeti aggregates such a large offering of outdoor activities: Where are the hidden gems?
If you’re looking for inspiration, you’ll find what you need on CheckYeti.com! But I can share some interesting ideas, of course: Why don’t you try Paragliding in Chamonix and enjoy the view of the Mont Blanc? Or discover the beauty of the Gesäuse national park near Graz in Austria while river rafting? Or book a ski tour in the Sierra Nevada in Spain for a change? But if you prefer to stay in Switzerland and try something that is new and awesome, you should definitely go Snowbiking in Arosa or Snowkiting on Lake Silvaplana in St. Moritz.