At the Beginning of the 2009/2010 South African holiday season I instructed my Cape Villas sales staff simply to ask their clients if they would also like to book a Game Lodge. Three clients said yes and we made about $10,000 each, we found when we booked them the game lodge we also booked their connecting flights and connecting hotels, instead of just accommodation provider we became a full tour operator. This was achieved without any web presence or experience.

It goes to pass that surely if we had a large web presence we would have done better, our website visitors would enquire directly for new offerings, and our existing clients will consider us more experienced and knowledgeable.
Cape Villas is not a big company, barley turning $500,000 a year. In the immediate catchment group of companies we would like to integrate with there must be at least 5,000 that make greater turnover, many a far greater turnover, and this does not account for big business.

Given the tools Sienna provides to think these companies would not equal Cape Villas 09/10 performance seems ridiculous and I’m sure it is, they will do better for sure, some much better.... but for the sake of under promising and over delivering this  is the figure I have used.
Just to clarify, we are not relying on these companies making safari holiday bookings; this is just the working demo that we have created. Given, our data in putters, researchers, consultants, a GDS feed and data contributing affiliates we will quickly have a concise global portfolio.

Example, by tacking Sienna’s feed an Ibiza based villa rental company could now offer Ibiza hotels, flights and Car Hire and a comprehensive presence in Majorca, Tenerife and Spain.

I hope I have made my point, and I hope you feel that my baseline per company earnings figure of $30,000 a year is easily achievable. If you do then this should be a no brainer, the rest of the math is sound. The only question you should be asking is “how seriously do we take this” with 300 Virgin companies, many worth billions $150,000,000 is a mere pittance, a drop in the ocean.

Read the rest of my proposal and I hope you can believe, as I do that the mid to high end boutique tour operator market is only a 100th maybe just a 1000th of Sienna’s potential, and that’s a lot of money, an evolution in economics even, so please I’d appreciate Virgins full attention.
 
Would more money and a team of Virgin’s best and brightest speed things up, sure it will and of course I’d like that but good management and HR aside, I can do this for $3M