Why choose Vialala when you want to travel tailor-made?

Vialala is the marketplace for custom travel, meaning the place where travelers meet travel advisors, or travel planners, to organize their journey together. What is the benefit of using Vialala for travelers?

Both a marketplace and a platform for creating, booking, and managing travel, Vialala is actually a new way to prepare one's travel: 100% customized, 100% digital, and with personalized assistance at every step.

For the first time, you instantly have access to a community of experts and specialists, the travel planners, who create for you a personalized travel itinerary based on your desires, and evolve it based on your discussions.

When the offer matches your expectations 100%, you click to book and pay a deposit, and Vialala takes over: travel contract, vouchers, insurance and guarantees, we take care of everything, including on-site assistance, included in our service. The detail of the prices even allows you to realize that we offer you the best rates for all the services we book for you, no "all-inclusive" packages!

There are three main interests:

1. Customization, tailor-made solutions
2. The prices, which are the same as if the traveler searched on their own
3. The management of the trip, assistance, and guarantees

There are a tremendous number of travelers and the tourism that has developed over the last thirty years around mass tourism, around packages, whether they are packages for relaxation in a hotel or a vacation club in Europe. But ultimately, there are quite few activities and interactions with the population. These can be hotel-airplane packages or packages with some activities included in any case.

This is closely linked to mass tourism and the way tourism has developed over the past thirty years, with all the excesses we know. And in fact, the real problem with this is that there is no personalization and hence we have access to very standard services. Basically, one chooses more or less a package based on a hotel plus plane price. And then, there are quite few activities available on-site and even fewer interactions with the local populations.

But ultimately, there are quite few activities and interactions with the population.

So, this is the first important element when working with the Vialala platform. We are here to provide custom services, so we are here to do two things, either off-the-beaten-path travel, simply, or eco-friendly trips since indeed, we work not only to move away from mass tourism, i.e., packages, but also towards more immersive trips, thus more interaction with the local people, but also generally more eco-friendly.

This custom approach allows for all this and ultimately helps guide bookings and services according to the right trends that we want to offer moving forward, especially when dealing with custom-made solutions. The first thing is that we do not engage in mass tourism, so we stay away from all those kinds of services. Therefore, the first advantage is that 100% of our trips are tailor-made.

The second advantage is the prices because generally, when it comes to customization, whether it's online with people who will present you with local hosts, or through a traditional physical agency, you indeed get bespoke service. But the problem often is the price. Most of the time, you will pay much more than if you booked directly yourself, for example, online. Therefore, the second major advantage with Vialala is that we have a very different system from traditional agencies with independent travel creators who are only paid when trips are booked by sharing the revenues between Vialala and the organizers.

And so, for traveler clients, they bear no other structural costs and we can offer them prices very similar to those they would find themselves on the internet, thanks to our access to professional booking centers.

We provide detailed pricing, unlike most tour operators or bespoke travel agencies that offer a lump sum for the entire stay, which does not allow people to see the breakdown of costs. Therefore, we are transparent about the pricing details and we apply small margins that we share with the organizers while remaining at the level of the public price of the service, meaning the price that the customer would pay by themselves.

Then, travel planners are used to being compensated for their consulting services, but when the trip is long enough that there are several services, and thus a substantial compensation, we try not to charge for the consulting at all. And if it is charged, it remains very reasonable and is not seen by travelers as administrative fees or similar charges. It is well perceived as a service given the high level of personalization. And so, these are things that once again allow us to stay within very reasonable prices.

The third major advantage for all travel organizers and therefore for the clients, is that we manage everything afterward, starting from the booking. Generally, travel planners offer a customized advisory itinerary but do not book any services for their clients because they are not allowed to. Thus, it is the client who will book based on the links provided by the travel planner.

If the customer faces a price difference because some time has passed or if the same availabilities are no longer there, it becomes a bit complicated because we might need to provide some advice again to find a plan B or to try to understand why they didn't get the same prices as initially advised, etc. So, that's the first issue. It's the disappointing aspect of only offering the itinerary and not handling the booking all the way through.

As this whole Covid and epidemic situation has shown, when you propose an itinerary to people and they then go book it themselves, the problem is that they have to book on five, six, or even ten different websites depending on the number of services included in the advice you've given them. Consequently, in case of any issue, whether it's a postponement, cancellation, or modification, clients have to deal with each provider themselves. If there’s a problem, they must manage on their own by directly dealing with airlines and engage in fairly unpleasant and sometimes endless conversations to hopefully prevail.

It was the same, not only for flights, but also for certain hotels since each hotel or hotel group has its own cancellation and modification policy. And then, potentially, imagine they purchased services on site, whether through receptives or not. One can imagine that managing these modifications and managing the credits, postponements, etc., must have also been challenging. So, what Vialala does, besides offering customization to all trips and providing travelers with the same prices as if they searched by themselves, offers them simply a single invoice with specialized travel insurance and even with special Covid-19 clauses.

Vialala will follow through to the end, unlike what a travel planner who is only responsible for the advice they provide would do, including in case of any issues on site. It's not just about managing bookings; therefore, the Vialala platform allows travelers and thus organizers who want to work with travelers, to ultimately access this structure which via an Atout France license and through an organization, makes it possible to do this and to rely on a single supplier. In case of a change, for example, or a modification of a date or in case of doubt, one can, with Vialala, manage postponements, or even cancellations, as there have been many over the past year. And it is indeed Vialala that is in charge of this.

For travelers, it's a beneficial system because first, they have access to tailor-made services, which are usually very expensive. Then, it's not tailor-made packaged from standard receptive packages. It is indeed tailor-made by each travel organizer. And travel planners are well aware of the quality level they can offer. Precisely by discussing with clients and fully customizing their services.

The second advantage, after the customization, is the price since we offer the same prices that customers would find by themselves. So, ultimately, they no longer have much interest in searching on their own.

The third element, which we have realized over the past three years is really very important, especially when providing assistance to customers and also support to suppliers in case of modifications, postponements of cancellations, etc. And this goes quite far because, in fact, the customer can rely on Vialala and the travel organizer as well from the moment the reservation is made and the first deposit of the trip is paid, it is indeed Vialala that is in charge of delivering a real travel contract to the customer, with a guarantee on all the booked services and therefore with monitoring of these services and tracking of any possible modifications, changes or unforeseen events that may occur.

So, for customers, there is indeed a triple benefit. First, having custom-made options and being able to do something other than packages. Most people want this, even need it. No one wants those low-value added resort packages anymore that could be done anywhere. Thus, you have access to this personalization and help to properly organize your vacation with specialists. You get the same prices as if you were searching on your own. And finally, you have access to management and assistance that makes it even less beneficial to book on your own based on just some simple work planner advice.

So, for customers, there is indeed a triple benefit

Ultimately, Vialala greatly assists travel creators in that it guarantees all their services and allows them to manage everything in one place. And then, for travelers, the benefits are also numerous. It offers access to a different kind of tourism, off the beaten path and 100% customized according to one's own desires, with prices that are the same as if one were to search on their own, and this assistance service and travel contract that means one can rely on Vialala for the entire trip.