I had the pleasure of getting some professional and personal insights from Pascal Bordat, who is a driving force behind the new online travel start-up, Sprice.com. Pascal tells us about the milestones along his journey here, and his views on online travel distribution and meta-search.

Name: Pascal Bordat

Current Company and Title: Co-Founder and Director of Sprice.com

[JJ] What do you currently do and what is your main professional focus?
[Pascal] I essentially focus on developing the revenues of Sprice.com worldwide with Travel Suppliers and advertisers. As well as extending the reach of Sprice.com in terms of countries.


[JJ] You've been to Stanford and the Ecole Centrale de Paris - please tell us more about your academic background and what you did after your finished school?

[Pascal] After scientific curriculum at Ecole Centrale, I went to Stanford to expand my background with a more business and enterprise management focused education. After school I spend 1 year and half in San Francisco at the French Trade Commission helping French companies to do business in California, that was to fulfil my National Service. Then, after two years and half in the Silicon Valley, I could not help but join a high tech start-up specialized in smart card applications back in Paris with a stint in New York. Four years later I was approached to join Amadeus headquarters in Madrid as Manager Business Development & Joint Ventures.

[JJ] Your past work experience includes stints with Amadeus, Travelprice, Zuji and Unisys to mention a few - what were the highlights of your career?

[Pascal] What I enjoyed most was to bring vision of new business models to reality. I did so for Amadeus where I created the Internet Business Unit (now called e-travel) back in 1996 when the internet was just getting started as a sales channel for travel companies. And later on with Travelprice.com and the other companies I worked for where the concept was more mature but specific challenges lied in front, such as opening up new markets and going into BtC models.

These experiences included not only convincing key stakeholders and stockholders (raising funds from internal or external investors on the concept) to go ahead with it, but as well assembling adequate teams and getting the activity rolling with customers buying our services.

[JJ] What do you feel are your biggest personal and professional accomplishments?

[Pascal] In line with what I mentioned above: having been one of the pioneers in developing travel e-commerce and expanding it to its ultimate form the Travel Meta-Search concept.

Starting with the creation of Amadeus e-business, developing On line Travel Agency businesses like Travelprice.com and ZUJI as recognized brands in several countries in Europe and Asia. And finally creating and developing Sprice.com which beginnings are very promising.

[JJ] You've co-founded sprice.com - when and how was this idea conceived and how has it progressed so far?

[Pascal] For a long time I had identified the concept of meta-search as a perfect fit for the travel industry. It is really leveraging all the power of the net to match customer intents with commercial offers in an almost friction free environment. This is kind of a dream come true formed during my time with a GDS and Online Travel Agencies. All the travel players are now going on the net and pushing their sales. Customers long for help to be able to apprehend the market and make the right choice among millions of offers. Both technology and the market were ready for that concept so I decided to go ahead and work on creating a player in that category. In parallel to my initiative, two friends from the industry had already worked on a prototype. When they sent me a message to show me an earlier version of Sprice.com called Fare.Net, I jumped and decided to form a company with them based in Singapore and dedicated to develop that concept for Asia.

Since then we merge Fare.Net with Coelis SA which was developing advanced search engines in travel and a comparison site called Tazzoo and we formed Travel Meta Search Pte Ltd the company behind Sprice. At the time of the merger we were also proud to welcome to leading venture capital firms Sofinnova Partners and Walden International who invested a total of USD10.2 M in Sprice.com.

[JJ] Why Meta Search? What do you feel is the potential here?

[Pascal] As mentioned above, for me the Travel Meta Search is the ultimate form of marketing and distribution for travel products. It leverages all the know how accumulated so far and really harness the power of the Internet to deliver the absolute best experience to travellers (having visibility on the whole market offers) and the best ROI for marketing money of travel suppliers. We also play a very important role in offering a sharper alternative to acquire online customers than through generic search engines. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is now a must for any company willing to attract customers to their web sites. But SEM is getting very expensive due to the shortage of options (the key words “Hotel Paris” generate more than 100 million entries, so competition to be on the first result page is fierce) and the ROI is very poor for e-travel companies. Conversion rates are much better behind meta-search portals such as Sprice. We are becoming de facto the lowest cost marketing channel for travel companies, due to our highly qualified visitorship.



[JJ] You've had a lot of experience in the area of e-commerce - what do you think have been the major trends that have shaped the field?

[Pascal] e-commerce is really getting off the ground thanks to easier access to the internet (seen now in France where up to 10 options exist on the market to get 20 Megabit/s bandwith for only 29.95 Euros per month, also happening in Spain and other markets), coupled with easy use of credit card or other online payment tools. The multiplication of online merchants is also a factor. In travel Low Cost carriers have also given a boost to e-commerce (even in countries with a not perfect internet access infrastructure such as Malaysia) by only selling their tickets via the net.

[JJ] Any thoughts on the future? Where do you see e-commerce / online marketing & distribution in the Travel industry headed?

[Pascal] I believe that the trend of empowering customers via meta-search and web 2.0 social networks will grow and flourish. Customers will be able to build their travel solutions by themselves directly interacting with the providers of travel services and products. The user-interface will also expand through the use of smart phones and PDA’s.

[JJ] Any personal comments, remarks or words of advice for e-commerce professionals?
[Pascal] Just go for it, your dreams can become reality.


Visit www.sprice.com

tags: talent-jungle, people, interview, pascal, bordat, pascal-bordat, sprice, ecommerce, ebusiness, travel, hospitality, meta-search, GDS, online, internet, hotels, business, online-travel, OTA, web-2.0, social-networking