Building an Online Travel Company From Barcelona: Guillermo Gaspart, CEO of ByHours (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How long did it take you to reach $1 million in revenue?

Guillermo Gaspart: It was the second year or third year that allowed us to reach this amount.

Sramana Mitra: Clearly, your first point of call is Barcelona. You had contact and friends there. So that was an easy start. How many hotels were you able to get from Barcelona before you moved out to other places?

Guillermo Gaspart: We moved really soon to Madrid. In Spain, these are the two biggest cities and they’re similar. That’s why we moved really soon to Madrid. We followed exactly the same strategy. We acquired some hotels in Madrid.

Sramana Mitra: Could you give me the time window? When did you start Madrid? In 2012 when you launched, how long did you just do Barcelona? At what point did you start introducing Madrid?

Guillermo Gaspart: The first was 12th March of 2012 in Barcelona. The first in Madrid was probably in the same year 2012 in September or October.

Sramana Mitra: How long does it take for you to get a city up and running with the critical mass of hotel options?

Guillermo Gaspart: More or less, six months.

Sramana Mitra: So each city takes six months to get wrapped up. What is the next point? When you hit $1 million in revenue, were you doing just Barcelona and Madrid or were there other cities in the pool?

Guillermo Gaspart: At the beginning, it was more about trying to raise more money because we were on a loss. We needed more money just to increase the number of employees and just to improve everything. The next step was to raise more money.

We made the first professional fundraising process and that was in the beginning of 2013. With that money, we opened all of Spain. We have been improving. Geographically, we opened the rest of Spain.

Sramana Mitra: You said that in the beginning it was mostly business users. Is that still the same? Or in the case of when you opened up all of Spain, you were also catering to leisure travelers or tourists? Or was it still just business users?

Guillermo Gaspart: No. Since the beginning, the use case was the same. We’re really focused on business people, travelers, or even families. But we realized something that we didn’t expect.

For example, all the hotels that are close to the hospitals, we don’t really know exactly if this is leisure or business. Some of these people that are in the hospital with their relatives, maybe they just need some time just to take a shower or have an apple or whatever.

Sramana Mitra: So, that’s another use case. Are there other use cases that are specific to your renting by the hour?

Guillermo Gaspart: Yes, before an event. You have to go to a theater or go to the concert. We have a long list of different use cases. For example, right now, we realize that in all these cities there’s really a lot of traffic jam. Then we have some people that just go to take a shower and to relax even if they’re a local.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Building an Online Travel Company From Barcelona: Guillermo Gaspart, CEO of ByHours
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