FLYR- When You Should Book That Flight

on May 11, 2015 at 4:55 pm

This interview is with the one of the founder’s of FLYR Cyril Guiraud

TD: Introduction and bio and link to your startup:

FLYR:

Consumer Web App: http://www.getflyr.com/

Dealing with constantly changing airfares has previously meant uncertainty and hassle for travelers.

That all ends with FLYR. FLYR leverages big data and machine learning to accurately predict changes in airfare. The FLYR prediction and protection engine can then calculate the cost of a hold or guarantee on a fare. With FLYR, travelers can predict, secure and hold the best prices, effectively ending the guessing game associated with booking flights.

TD: What interests you about the travel/transport space?

The Travel Industry knows many companies that help you to dream about a destination (Tripadvistor, LonelyPlanet, etc.), to find and purchase the flights to get there (Expedia, Kayak, etc.) and to make the journey itself more pleasant (TripIt). There is no one that looks out for you in between deciding where and when to go and making the final booking, leaving you in the dark when plans change. That’s where FLYR comes in. To date, real innovations in travel tech have been rare – while substantial improvements have been made with interface and visual optimization, few (if any) have been able to significantly change or improve how a consumer navigates through travel inventory. With FLYR’s technologies, we have a tremendous opportunity to enable the next generation of travel products.

TD: What got you into it?

Today travelers are faced with major friction and pain in all aspects of air travel starting with the airfare purchasing process. Having travelled millions of miles for business and pleasure, we know the pain. We believe that when you travel to see friends, family, go on vacation or need to make a business trip, the traveler should have peace-of-mind knowing they got a the right air fare at the best price. FLYR was founded to give travelers control, flexibility, freedom and most importantly peace-of-mind when buying a plane ticket.

TD: What problem are you trying to solve?

Booking a flight is problematic by design. While you spend time shopping around prices increase. If you book immediately you might miss out on better deals or pay high fees to change your flights.

FLYR revolutionizes flight booking by accurately predicting future prices and the cost to guarantee those fares. FLYR exposes its predictions and innovative fare protection solutions via easy to integrate APIs:

Foresight – flight level, accurate fare and availability predictions trigger higher conversions throughout the booking funnel
FareBeacon – predictive fare alerts tell visitors when the time to book has arrived
FareKeep – protect your consumers against rising airfares for seven days
FareSafe best rate guarantee – automatically compensate customers for fare decreases after they book

With FLYR, travel and credit card companies now have a simple way to increase conversions, generate high margin revenue and capture consumer intent.

TD: Discuss failure or setback you’ve experienced and how you got through it.

The life of a startup is full of “no’s” when you start. (your solution won’t work, this is too complex, customers are not ready for your product etc ) and through perseverance and hard work you begin adding the “yes’s” (first investors, first employees, competitions wins, first customers etc) and eventually, as you grow, the yes’s outnumber the no’s.

TD: What key lesson did you learn?

Be resilient, iterate fast, and stay focused.

TD: Clear message our audience can take away with them.

Always know when to buy.

FLYR long term vision is to become the largest big data and predictive analytics company in travel, delivering new and innovative services via our data insights to all major players.

TD: What’s your best piece of entrepreneurial advice in one sentence?

Be resilient, iterate fast, and stay focused…. Anything is possible

About:

FLYR was founded by Alexander Mans (Founded a company focused on DPI for cellular networks at age 15. Has managed engineering teams in automotive, aviation and healthcare.) , Cyril Guiraud (7 years in travel as Operations Director at Go West Tours (60,000+ customers/year). Founded a lifestyle brand. Professional musician and sailing addict. )and Jean Tripier. (20 years in high tech, CEO of mobile travel company WorldMate (sold to Carlson Wagonlit), COO of Good Technology and Visto, COO, SVP Vodafone. Harvard MBA.)