Vollo Targets the Bus Ticket Service and Will Soon Enter Rail Transport

One of the most interesting Croatian startups, Volo, according to its founder Marko Jukić, plans to offer railway tickets after the bus tickets, but he will not stop there as they plan to cover other types of transport.

"Buying and selling within a bus service is growing rapidly. About 350% more compared to last year. Our service was used by people from over 70 countries of the world," Jukić said.

Vollo targets the world market. What have you done so far and what are your plans for?

Currently, we offer a wide variety of options for bus tickets, prices, and total travel time as well as many other services. For example, at the moment you can in just a few simple steps find and book the most suitable trip for you, get inspiration for new tourist destinations, and find tips and tricks for traveling, which will make your trip much easier.

Our future plan is that the first thing people think about when they think of intercity bus transportation is Vollo, same as booking.com or Airbnb are the first things that come to our mind when it comes to tourist accommodation.

The ticket purchase service is not easy, the application itself and the system itself are much simpler than negotiating with service providers to enter the system. Have you ever encountered problems in Croatia and other countries regarding service providers?

So far, we are directly present on Croatian and Bosnian market through our local offices. However, with the bus lines that we offer we cover the wider Europe. The biggest difficulties are rather associated with the complicated administration in both countries (Croatia, BiH). For example, the registration process is much more difficult and far longer than it should be. The next most common problem, or better to say challenge, is the problem of poor digitalization of the service itself. On the one hand some carriers carry out a job fairly manually, while on the other hand domestic travelers are still skeptical when it comes to an online planning and buying and that's why we need to invest extra energy to both sides. Intercity transport (bus, train, ship) goes through a kind of digitization transition and in 5 years we believe that it will be possible to make an intermodal connection, as is the EU 2020 plan.

How are you planning to move to other markets and how fast are you planning to expand?

Our plans are primarily related to signing contracts with carriers, also to initiate cooperation with new customers. Although the focus of this segment remains primarily in the territory of the Republic of Croatia and BiH, we also monitor the world market and plan to penetrate into some new countries. BiH as a natural partner of Croatia, but also through a tourist link, since tourists as well as domestic users have a large flow of goods and services so there is a real need in the aspect of the connection between these two countries. In addition, besides connecting with carriers, we need to work well on marketing in all those countries where we are present, where we now test the best approach and traction. Consequently, the site has been translated into a dozen languages. In addition, we are constantly working on automating and digitizing products and services through which we are directly trying to help carriers to adapt to new trends as soon as possible and to optimize costs and increase their profits.

Do you have a competition on the world market and how do you differentiate?

The travel industry has never been more competitive, but on the other hand, the world has never been more globalized and interconnected and interdependent. Unlike other online instances, e.g. delivery of food online or online retail, which I previously worked on. The journey at the start is a cross-boarder and connects several countries, so from the very beginning we are present in over 20 countries, which we connect with - whether we want it or not. We at Vollo believe that the customer / traveler must be in the foreground and growth is based on excellent user experience and recommendations.

The Western Europe market is more competitive and it is more difficult to get a buyer, but not impossible, while in the East there are challenges of poor service that need to be standardized and raise quality, and there is less competition. Some new carriers from Europe are raising the ladder, which helps us generally change the entire industry in the direction of the center of the user - which more than ever has control over the quality of the service, and there are also possibilities for a favorable assessment of this quality from review, or what is bad advertisements that go viral in a second. Due to the great offer, it is important to fight for each passenger.

Do you expect Vollo to become a global startup and why?

Sure, we expect Vollo to become a global startup. It is because in the segment that we are currently interested in, 90% of bus ticket purchases still take place at bus stations. In the next few years we must find a way to develop our startup so it can make an global, or in other words worldwide, impact. In other Western countries, this ratio is the opposite, and that is what we strive for. And that is also what most startups strive for today, and will strive for for the next few years.

In order to achieve that we must do some steps forward. We can not rely on what was yesterday. We must look for what is coming to us tomorrow. That is why we are doing our best to make it possible for a customer to combine different types of transport, to search for and buy tickets for bus, train and airplane in the same place, using the same service. This is the easiest way for a customer to save time & money at the same time.