One of the first industries to harness the power of the internet, after porn, was the travel business. OTAs — Online Travel Agencies — like Booking.com and Expedia, and Kayak, and whatever that one with William Shatner was, swallowed up the lion’s share, and most of the rest of the animals in the jungle’s share, of travel booking. You could use your computer to set your travel plans. The world has never been the same since (and not better).
I don’t know about you, but I have never, ever, ever used one of those services. I like talking to people. More precisely, stabbing in the dark with a keyboard and then arriving in somewhere like Italy and hoping that I did all the right stabbing does not inspire confidence in me. I’m in a minority.
The rest of the world liked/likes the convenience of booking online and part of the appeal is the supposed cost savings (often there are, not always). The quaint notion of discussing your travel hopes and intentions with someone who knew very well the places you were going receded, or became the province of the very rich, who dealt with very expensive and exclusive specialists. It’s a trade off — convenience and (probably) savings for knowledge and help and care. But the help and care is definitely missing, and you are pretty much literally just a number when you arrive somewhere now.
Konrad Waliszewski came up with a smart twist to that — first intended as Tripscout, a “super app for travel” as he puts it, which he and co-founder Andy Acs launched in January 2022. But by the time it came to market, as the pandemic was ending, they saw that social media commerce was growing exponentially and people, especially younger ones, were spending tremendous amounts of time on social and that app usage was decreasing proportionately. So they changed the orientation of the company and launched their booking platform on Instagram in June 2022, and changed the name and officially launched as @hotel on New Year’s Day 2023.
“Social commerce is the biggest consumer commerce shift since the internet, and we wanted to lead the way in that evolution. We wanted to have the @ sign in our name to symbolize leadership,” says Waliszewski. “The traveler changed so much in the past decade. The travel industry really hasn’t changed in the 20+ years since it first came online. With the exception of Airbnb or Uber, every other company and service is pretty much the exact same and doing it the exact same way. I wanted to make it easier to find great experiences and the right place to stay in social video first.”
Besides promising greater savings at hotels across 120 countries than the traditional OTAs, because instead of spending on advertising they reach customers directly, they did something very interesting and, to folks like me, very appealing, they brought in human travel agents as a support network to assist their customers with whatever travel problems they encounter, or advice they need, around the clock.
That, to my (mostly uneducated) eye, is a game changer.
And they are the highest rated hotel-booking site on Trustpilot –- that’s got to count for something, right? There’s an intimacy to the platform and its interactions with travelers. Rachel Greene, their in-house publicist, says: “Nobody is asking for a top 10 hotel in Boston, but they are sharing things like: ‘I’m a woman traveling solo in Manhattan in September and want safe accommodations near Times Square.’ Or, ‘I love a certain restaurant in Dubai -– what romantic hotels are nearby?’” The key here is clients can talk to or DM someone, and get an immediate human response.
Astonishingly, @hotel quickly became the largest travel company on Instagram — by being the fastest and smartest getting there, would be my theory. I say astonishingly because, what happened to the other guys? Have they not heard of Instagram? (Answer, they have, but they seem to only use it as candy, like everyone else uses IG).
Today, @hotel has sixty million followers on Instagram, across more than a hundred accounts — there’s the mothership, @hotel, with a piddling 1.3M followers, and then a page for “every major travel destination,” Konrad explains, when one naturally questions these numbers.
“@newyorkcity.explore, @paris.explore, @london.travelers, @seoul.southkorea, etc,” he lists, for a primer. To put that in context — if context is even relevant at that point — the followers number is allegedly double the rest of the entire travel industry combined, not just OTAs.
According to Konrad they get 2 billion views a month and generate “a thousand pieces of content” a day.
That’s more than we do at WONDERLUST!
Konrad was born in the US shortly after his parents Leszek Waliszewski and Danuta Connell (Danuta Pleczuk at the time) emigrated from Soviet Union-controlled Poland in the mid 1980s. Leszek was an engineer at a factory in Gdansk, where the Solidarity revolution began, and was close to Lech Walesa, who instigated and led the famous shipyard uprising that was the first real crack in the Soviet Bloc empire, the beginning of the end of the Soviet’s grip on Eastern Europe.
Leszek was the highest ranking leader of the revolutionary group outside of Poland. He acted as a liaison to the US government and Reagan’s White House and was responsible for getting and shaping the US’s support. All importantly, he convinced them that Solidarity had not been crushed by martial law but was still intact, the movement still alive and vital, just underground. After the Russians left Poland and the country held their first democratic elections since the 1920s, Walesa, running for President but slipping in the polls, asked Leszek to return to campaign and give speeches for him. Walesa historically won. Leszek didn’t want to stay in politics and went back to America.
As a boy, Konrad was constantly reminded by his parents of how lucky he was to be born in a free country, that they had to fight a superpower just to travel or start a business, that he had no excuses.
He became a voracious traveler, long before @hotel and before and after he started his own family, and has now been to over 100 countries. When he started the company, he gave the first 250,000 people who signed up his cell phone number, so they could call him personally if they had any issues with their bookings.
What do you remember of Solidarity?
My parents were political refugees. My father was one of the main leaders of the revolution that overthrew the Soviet Union in Poland and my mother was printing out underground newspapers about freedom and democracy. They were both thrown in prison for a year before escaping to the United States. When they landed in the U.S., they had $50 to their name and didn’t speak a word of English.
Growing up, their journey taught me two major things. First, I saw the hustle of two immigrants trying to make it in a new country. That instilled in me an entrepreneurial spirit. Second, their stories made me realize that with the right idea and determination, you can shift the course of history.
I remember the stories, the political leaders meeting with my dad, him going back to help during the first election. When my dad moved back in 1995 (I was 9), I spent every summer and many Christmas breaks in Warsaw, so I vividly remember early post-Soviet Poland.
What made you travel so much as a young, single man?
Growing up with a family split between the U.S. and Europe, I was jetsetting back and forth by myself at a young age. I was taking solo Transatlantic flights when most kids my age were learning how to ride a bike. It made the world feel small to me and so I wanted to see it all.
Every trip changed me in some way. Being pushed outside my comfort zone and routine, along with the sensory bombardment of new sights, smells, sounds, tastes, and customs, invigorated my mind. It made me uniquely present in a way I wasn’t in other parts of my life. Every corner of the world opened a new door and I just wanted to see more.
What have you learned about traveling with children?
I saw travel as my best form of education, a path to become way more open-minded. Giving that gift to my kids was a top priority for my wife and I. We were determined not to let them grow up in a bubble, become fussy eaters or see the world through a narrow lens.
I quickly realized you’ve got to plan activities that are enjoyable for both of you. If you make the trip entirely about them or drag them only to your interests, someone’s unhappy.
How many of the 250,000 people you gave your number to actually called?
I never counted, but it was a lot! I had thousands of conversations. As a young startup, I knew we couldn’t compete with the industry incumbents, but we could do the things they weren’t willing to do, to obsess about the psychology, behavior, and desires of the traveler.
What’s your favorite destination? Where has been the most friendly, least friendly?
There are too many “favorite” places to list. There are many places I keep coming back to. I love travel experiences outside my comfort zone, so places like Papua New Guinea and Somalia are on top of my list. Purely for enjoyment — Egypt, Vietnam, South Africa, Turkey, Greece, Japan, Croatia, and so many more.
As for friendly places, hands down the Philippines. As for least friendly, I’ve found any culture — except for the tourist trap parts — is friendly. Some just require them to warm up and trust you first. Or start drinking with you.
What’s the most underrated city in the world?
Tbilisi, Georgia. Honestly, almost every city in Eastern Europe is underrated.
Name three places people should know more about but apparently don’t.
Central Asia. I just got back from a road trip along the Pamir Highway through Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. It was an extremely primitive dirt road often along the edge of a cliff, but every single scene for 10 days would have been a top-rated national park in the U.S.
East Africa. Some of my favorite memories happened traveling through Ethiopia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda.
Southeast Asia beyond Thailand and Vietnam. I say “beyond” because everyone probably knows how incredible those two countries are to visit. However, more people should visit Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, and other countries in the region. You can’t beat the food, hospitality, and beauty of the region.
What are the biggest do’s and don’t for booking a hotel?
Do: Put most of the value on location. That’s going to determine if you are spending a lot of your time commuting around or actually exploring.
Ask if there are any upgrades available when you check-in (or the morning of). You’ll be surprised how many times you’ll get hooked up for just asking, if the hotel isn’t full.
Don’t: Overvalue hotel loyalty points. They offer way less value than airline or credit card points.
And don’t book a hotel without checking out at athotel.com or @hotel on Instagram or TikTok!
What was your scariest moment traveling? What was the most special?
I’ve been to a lot of very poor and war torn countries full of State Department travel advisory warnings. However, I’ve found there was almost always an inverse correlation with how much I was warned about a place with how friendly and hospitable the people actually were.
That being said, the scariest probably happened in Beirut — a city I love and have been to multiple times. I attempted to explore a Hezbollah neighborhood which they did not like. They attempted to corner me and it resulted in a foot chase out of there until safely reaching a main highway and jumping into a taxi.
Every moment of genuine hospitality is special. I’ve been invited into more homes than I can count and forced to stay for dinner. Except for major cities, many cultures around the world have a view that travelers are a “gift from God” and take that very seriously.
There are travel companies with far more resources than you, what are they doing wrong on Instagram? What’s your magic sauce?
We paid attention to our customer more and realized they were starting to search on Instagram (now TikTok too) before Google. We saw all the attention shifting to social media and became obsessed with the platforms while every big company simply thought of it as some place for friends to connect and maybe build brand.
We build data and technology that gives us more insight into algorithms and trends on a real-time basis.
[And people] can reach someone immediately through phone, email, WhatsApp, or even Instagram DM. We’ve over invested in building out a great customer support experience.
You have said travel is a pyramid scheme for Google — why?
Nearly 50% of all revenue in the travel industry goes to paid ads on Google. Bookings Holdings is Google’s single largest advertiser. Everyone is competing for the same travelers in the buying process.
As a result, everyone is in an arms race to outspend each other. At the end of this, everyone spends their margins away and the only one that wins is Google.