Start-up stage: ReserveX wants to help travel providers integrate tours and experiences

What is your 30-second pitch to investors?

ReserveX A B2B engine built for travel and the travel experience economy, making booking multi-day tours and curated experiences as seamless and scalable as airline or hotel bookings. Multi-day tours are the highest-margin product in travel, driven by Millennials, Gen Z and Baby Boomers seeking authentic, shared adventures.

The platform we offer includes white label consumer solutions and modern agent interfaces, enabling OTAs, travel agencies, airlines, retailers and tour operators to unlock this less digital segment with less friction, higher commissions and global reach.

Describe the business and technical aspects of your startup.

Business: ReserveX operates a B2B2C model, partnering with leading travel brands, OTAs, airlines and travel agencies to power their vertical travel and experiences. Our platform helps them add high-value experiential content to their existing booking process, generating incremental revenue and deeper customer engagement.

technology: Our platform is built on a microservices architecture deployed on AWS using EC2, containers, and managed databases. It has a modular API that provides real-time availability, dynamic pricing, content syndication and a two-way booking process. Our white label solutions enable customized rapid deployment across languages, currencies, payment gateways and CRM systems, ensuring scalability across different markets and partners. We're also focused on artificial intelligence, including a very exciting project with Google Cloud that will help innovate in this space in 2026.

Provide us with your SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis of your company.

Advantages

• Founders have deep domain expertise and proven track record of building and scaling travel technology platforms
• API-first architecture built for multi-day and curated experiences
• Through live partner integrations in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific, including our Presented in partnership with Webjet Australia

weakness

• Early consumers have limited brand awareness
• Rely on B2B distribution partners to scale
• Currently only a subset of multi-day operators support the real-time booking API

Chance

• The global experience economy is at a digital inflection point
• Airlines, hotels and OTAs seek differentiated ancillary products
• Apply artificial intelligence and personalization to better provide travelers with curated experiences

threaten

• Existing OTAs or aggregators expand into multi-day segment
• Rising CAC and potential profit compression in digital distribution
• Operational risks related to supplier readiness and reliability

From a customer and industry perspective, what travel pain points are you trying to alleviate?

For consumers:

• Difficulty discovering high-quality, proven experiences with trusted travel brands
• Multi-day itineraries lack real-time availability and instant confirmation
• The booking experience is fragmented and pricing is inconsistent

For travel agencies:

• Manual and time-consuming booking process using printed manuals or call centers
• Lack of visibility into automation and real-time availability
• Our ReserveXpert interface enables faster digital bookings, better conversions and higher commissions

For travel agencies:

• Limited access to global distribution channels and modern booking tools
• Manual processes and fragmented systems lead to high operational costs
• Lost commissions and limited exposure to new audiences

Now that the product is built, what is your customer acquisition strategy?

• Establish strategic distribution partnerships with OTAs, airlines and travel agency networks
• White label and API integration enable partners to embed travel directly into their platform
• Membership program offers exclusive membership prices and exclusive experiences
• Corporate incentive travel program drives team engagement with curated experiences
• Increase consumer awareness through partnerships with Google Things to Do and our consumer brands, my travel

Please tell us what process you went through to determine your company’s true needs and the size of your target market.

According to McKinsey & Company, the global “experience” market exceeds $1 trillion, with structured paid events worth $25-310 billion annually, nearly half of which are still offline bookings.

ReserveX targets the digital booking segment of this market: multi-day and planned tours. Through interviews with more than 100 operators and partners, we validated the unmet need for a unified, turnkey distribution solution, enabling ReserveX to capture significant share in North America, Europe and Asia.

How and when will you make money?

• Booking commission/transaction fee
• Use our tools to charge SaaS/subscription fees to operators, agencies and travel brands
• White label licensing for enterprise partners

Early revenue is already being generated through real-time integration, and as the number of partners expands, break-even is expected to be achieved within 18-24 months.

What is the background and past achievements of the founding team?

• Dan Goldsell, CEO: Veteran travel technology executive with previous leadership roles at Travelport, Flight Center and Expedia
• Chief Product Officer Kelly Tompkins: Founder of AdventureLink (multi-day SaaS) and LeisureLink (the first GDS-related vacation rental distribution platform), and early employee of GetThere (acquired by Saber for $757 million)

Together, the team brings proven experience in scaling travel platforms from inception to exit.

How do you address diversity and inclusion issues in your business?

Diversity is deeply ingrained in our DNA. ReserveX recruits globally, with balanced representation across gender, geography and culture. Our teams are located across North America, Europe and Asia – reflecting the global traveler community we serve. We design for inclusivity, providing multilingual, localized interfaces and supporting small regional operators around the world.

What has been the hardest part of starting a company so far?

Expand supplier integrations for hundreds of small and medium-sized tour operators – each with different systems and readiness. Onboarding and building trust requires education, integration support and consistent quality assurance, balanced with maintaining launch speed and capital efficiency.

Generally speaking, travel startups have a pretty hard time making an impact – why are you one of the lucky ones?

Experience distribution has long been fragmented, but digital readiness is accelerating. Since the majority of bookings are made offline, ReserveX is building the infrastructure backbone to consolidate access to experiences (multi-day tours, day activities and cruises) and drive online bookings at lower costs through trusted retail brand websites.

Our retail partners and their trust in our team and platform are a major reason for ReserveX's success. Our domain experience, partner-first approach and modern platform make us integral for retail partners entering rapidly growing markets for unique experiences.

Where do you think your startup will be in a year’s time?

• Multiple real-time partner integrations across three continents
• Recurring SaaS and licensing revenue from operators and travel brands
• ReserveXpert fully rolled out to global travel agencies
• The platform has tens of thousands of bookings per month
• Industry recognized as the leading online booking experience platform

What's your ending? (Going public, acquiring, growing and staying private, etc.)

ReserveX aims to be the global infrastructure for booking meaningful travel experiences. While open to future strategic partnerships or acquisitions, our current focus is sustainable profitable growth – building a platform that connects the world through shared adventure.