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Launch HN: Solve (YC S17) – We Save International Travelers Hours of Time

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Re: Launch HN: Solve (YC S17) – We Save International Travelers Hours of Time

#111

Post by peteretep »

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #109
peteretep wrote: post #108

I do a lot of international business travel, mostly in business. 3 figures of flights last year. I would use this service, but you're about 2x as expensive as I'd pay for it. For example, you want £140 for landing at Suvarnabhumi. This gets me Fast Track immigration, but I already get that if I'm landing in business, and help with onwards transportation, but as per most airports, the place is swamped with good qualit…

I also wonder why the prices are largely in the same ballpark irrespective of the airport. This seems a mostly labor intensive offering, and labor costs are much lower in, say, India.

They are reselling local services. The costs are going to be space in the airport + paying for customers to cut queues, which airports will already be selling to airlines. Staff costs will be a minor component, I suspect.

Re: Launch HN: Solve (YC S17) – We Save International Travelers Hours of Time

#112

Post by kobeya »

mrtimo wrote: post #103
JimDabell wrote: post #7

One of the first things I do when I arrive in a new country is pick up a local SIM card so I can use my phone without roaming charges. Sometimes this is nice and simple where you just walk to a booth in the airport and pick one up, other times it's a real hassle, having to hunt around for a local shop and fill in personal information on sign-up. Have you considered providing local SIM cards as part of your service?

T-mobile (Post-paid) has free international data and SMS... works in 100s of countries. No extra cost. This is the sole reason I am a customer. The data is slow, but definitely good enough. It is good enough to use google hangouts to call phones back in the states.

T-mobile also routes though a Texas VPN when you're out of the country, which has its tradeoffs (super annoying latency, but no censorship in places like China).

Re: Launch HN: Solve (YC S17) – We Save International Travelers Hours of Time

#113

Post by splonk »

clamprecht wrote: post #67

It's a good idea, and it reminds me of "handlers" in the general/business aviation world. When you land, they expedite your fueling, customs, immigration, overfly permits, flight planning & routing, and more. Back to normal travelers - I wish there were a free wiki that covered all this, since it seems like it's just a matter of having the right information. Like knowing which office to go in, what forms to have read…

Wikivoyage is the usual resource for this. Note that much of wikivoyage is targeted towards the backpacker world and is somewhat spammy so I wouldn't necessarily use it for hotel/restaurant recommendations, but it tends to be pretty good for basic stuff like airport entries and city transportation systems.

Wikitravel is very similar - I believe wikivoyage forked from wikitravel some years back, and my understanding is that many of the primary contributors moved to wikivoyage.

Re: Launch HN: Solve (YC S17) – We Save International Travelers Hours of Time

#114

Post by paulsutter »

How are you able to consistently skip the lines in so many countries? I love this idea but my skepticism would prevent me from trying it.

A better explanation might help resolve that. Is it sketchy? does it involves bribes? Is it just a scam? These are the questions that will give your target customers doubts. If I knew it was legit I would always use it.

Re: Launch HN: Solve (YC S17) – We Save International Travelers Hours of Time

#115

Post by blainevess »

JimDabell wrote: post #42
blainevess wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Communication with everyone involved has been a pain point for us, even as we've thrown technology at the problem. Right now, we're of course communicating with our agents via email, phone, and text to make sure everything goes smoothly. Plus, our clients have the agent's information and the agents have our client's information, so they can communicate directly if necessary. In the near future, the client and the age…

> In the near future, the client and the agent will have a Lyft-like experience on arrival or departure, where our agent sees the customer information on their agent app, and the customer sees the agent information on their customer app. That's not going to happen without a data connection on the customer's phone though, which means either expensive roaming, buying a SIM card before they meet the agent, or fighting t…

True - it won't work in every situation. We're planning to communicate similarly to how Airbnb communicates when a host gets a booking - push notification, text message, and email at all once. In the cases where someone doesn't have data, they often are still able to receive texts (not always).

Either way, we already over-communicate to the client to make sure they know what to do. Eventually, the agent's app will be helpful too, so the agent can recognize the client if the client uploads their photo to our system.

Your idea about Wi-Fi is certainly something to explore as well.

Re: Launch HN: Solve (YC S17) – We Save International Travelers Hours of Time

#117

Post by blainevess »

peteretep wrote: post #110
hayksaakian wrote: post #51

Super cool! Dubai airport has a service called 'marhaba' which basically does this but only in Dubai. It's great for helping someone who is older or disabled figure out their connecting flights through an airport. Smart to bring this to more places. Your pricing is pretty spot on too, it's a bit less expensive than marhaba btw.

> Smart to bring this to more places. I would be 90% amazed if they're bringing it to more places, rather than just reselling existing local services.

The key for us is making it more accessible and easy to book. We know that the current space is about to evolve pretty quickly. The current companies and individuals have actually been quite receptive to our approach. They just haven't had access to the tools we're building and the customers we're reaching.

Otherwise, yeah, we want to bring it to more places as we get a better understanding of the demand in places where the service isn't currently offered.

Re: Launch HN: Solve (YC S17) – We Save International Travelers Hours of Time

#118

Post by fauigerzigerk »

shawnsheikh wrote: post #98
orliesaurus wrote: post #80

Hey I travel a lot, always economy class, I hate queues... Im not sure about this, is it legal to speed up immigration process? Like how can non airport staff even get access to help you speed up internal airport stuff? I understand prebooking a taxi and helping you carry luggage? But anything else?

It's definitely legal, all of our ground team members have special badges that allow them to do this service. They'll escort you to special fast track lines or simply walk you to the front of the immigrations and customs lines. Our agents are problem solvers. If you forget something on the plane or need something they'll be sure to handle it quickly and efficiently. They're your your best bet when trying to get throu…

>They'll escort you to special fast track lines or simply walk you to the front of the immigrations and customs lines.

Just be careful how you do that. If you are a U.S company the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act may be relevant: https://www.justice.gov/criminal-fraud/foreign-corrupt-pract...

(IANAL)

Re: Launch HN: Solve (YC S17) – We Save International Travelers Hours of Time

#119

Post by blainevess »

hayksaakian wrote: post #51

Super cool! Dubai airport has a service called 'marhaba' which basically does this but only in Dubai. It's great for helping someone who is older or disabled figure out their connecting flights through an airport. Smart to bring this to more places. Your pricing is pretty spot on too, it's a bit less expensive than marhaba btw.

Thanks so much for your feedback! We are seeing a number of clients who simply want a little help getting through the airport, especially on tight connections.

Re: Launch HN: Solve (YC S17) – We Save International Travelers Hours of Time

#120

Post by StavrosK »

ransom1538 wrote: post #55
deepGem wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a huge pain in many of the airports that I have travelled. In fact, you'll even get ripped off at some. For example Rome. We paid 50 euros for a supposedly Schengen wide 1GB plan but as soon as we left Italy that SIM was useless. So yeah, I'd definitely pay someone if they can just hand me a SIM at a nominal price as soon as I walk out of immigration/baggage claim Singapore has done this in a great way. As so…

In Rome buying a sim is a total gamble -- many times they don't even work. I learned to buy the sim, then literally STAND in the same line and install it into my phone. (When I do this the staff at these stores start to get nervous.) If it doesn't work - I hand them back the sim and explain it doesn't work on my phone. They then take my receipt, type something into their computer, restart the phone and explain how it…

Are there people who take the SIM and leave? I always assume everyone stuck around until data was okay on the phone, since sometimes it needs activation, sometimes it needs settings, etc.
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