Discovering great places where, when, how and with whom to shoot great photos.
Travel and Photography are inextricably linked. As Susan Sontag wrote, “travel becomes a strategy for accumulating photographs.” Today’s travelers want photographs that allow them to express their own creativity and rise above tourist status.
PhotoSpotLand is a web|mobile platform which will become a one stop shop for passionate travelers and photographers.
On the business side PhotoSpotLand is a service business for tourist boards and travel operators. We curate a stream of crowd sourced PhotoSpots to attract more visitors, our goal is not the sharing of photos; it is sharing of expertise and inspiration.
PhotoSpotLand has users from 5 continents – PhotoSpots from more than 50 countries. Our patent-pending technology allows access to the platform without a data connection.
PhotoSpotLand helps tourist boards, travel operators, tourists (including blind ones) and locals achieve two distinct goals:
Mario Bucolo, the founder and CEO concieved the idea because he found himself using a lot of unproductive time searching for the best spot to capture the cityscape and architectural images for which he is known. He wanted to create a database of useful information together with locations and images to share with his fellow travelers and amateur and pro-photographers.
Travel and Photography are linked and both are growing markets. Travelers want to take great photos of the places they visit and photographers will visit great destinations to obtain the photos they want – the two activities go hand in hand. The Travel industry uses photos to create a sense of place, to create a desire to visit and know the place better.
PhotoSpotLand bridges these two needs by providing crowd sourced images and information for travelers and photographers and simultaneously a direct channel for the travel companies, tour operators and tourist boards. When our user discover a PhotoSpot, we enrich information creating a reason-why to visit.
PhotoSpots are created by the users and the Platform then geo-locates these onto a global map, logging data about the technical aspects of the photograph (ideal camera settings, ideal lens, ideal time etc) and interesting points about the location (how to get there, nearest hotel & food, accessibility, visitors info etc). All published photos are watermarked with the users name. The integrity of the database is preserved though accurate moderation.
PhotoSpotLand is the perfect location guide for your travel photography.
We operate inside the Mayor of London TravelTech Lab, invest in our platform (web & mobile) and take the opportunity to become an influencer of travel and photography.
The first goal of the PhotoSpotLand business plan is to sell PhotoMapping campaigns to travel boards. We ran a proof of concept PhotoMapping campaign in London during Q1 2016 and doubled our sign-up rate during that period. Andrew Cooke, Visit London COO, said “the PhotoMap is a great asset to the City of London.”
The PhotoMapping Campaigns will run on a model with an entry fee to cover the initial work, plus a sliding scale depending on the size of the area to be covered. As we scale our users we will introduce new services to the portfolio. The incremental revenues include services provided to key players in travel and photography industries and local activities around each PhotoSpots.
We anticipate that PhotoSpotLand will be a high-margin business, with margins of between 65% and 85% as we scale.
The founder and CEO, Mario Bucolo is a serial entrepreneur over 30 years and has created business in many varied sectors including travel, multimedia, marketing research, health centers, communication agencies and a photography studio. The team is highly motivated to disrupt the travel destination market and have created the initial tool to solve the problem of travelers need to capture the best photos from their trip and to create a compelling case to travel boards and others players in the photography and travel industry who will be able to lever the value of those crowd sourced images through their businesses.
The SmartPhone Market alone is estimated at more than 4 billion devices by end 2016 uploading photographs widely reported by Network Operators as the most popular application, it is clear that the number of potential PhotoSpotters is growing rapidly. More than a billion international trips undertaken in 2015 with 10% of those originating in China. The International Travel Market is estimated at 3.4 Trillion annually and set to double before 2030.
Travel destinations need to find new direct marketing channels to ensure they are not left behind as travel choices become increasingly driven by travel apps and social media.
There is demand for more authentic experience, a move away from traditional organised tourism, towards personalised travel experiences, hence the rise in community content apps such as Trip Advisor, this need to break away from the mould in their photography is serviced by PhotoSpotLand. The PhotoSpotLand solution addresses two separate markets, platform users and also service clients.
Essentially the user market includes anyone who has access to a camera or camera enabled device. PhotoSpotLand focuses on places not faces, so we target people who travel and who want to document where they have been and what they have seen. We have found that we receive submissions from both leisure and business travellers as well as local residents who want to share their PhotoSpot, their perspective. Typically our PhotoSpotters use Smartphones and often immediately upload PhotoSpots directly from the device, there is also the opportunity to upload from the website for those users who prefer to use dedicated photographic equipment. We promote an inclusive environment and so offer support to all including Blind Travellers and Photographers.
As well as the active users of the site, we have a large number of users who do not post but visit to use the information, as well as views from people without profiles.
On the client side we have a wide target market – those who will use the PhotoSpots to support their own business objectives. We have a number of different types of business, both in the tourism and photography sectors.
PhotoSpotLand has the two unique strengths of accurate geo-location together with moderation to ensure the quality of technical and practical information captured. PhotoSpotLand also uses proprietary technology to allow realtime access to all features without data connection (patent pending).
PhotoSpotLand seeks to assist the community to get off the beaten track and improve their photographic results, these both in response to current trends. We will continue to respond early to trends and maintain relevance in our fast changing ecosystem and partner to create strength in our footprint.
PhotoSpotLand will generate revenues in a number of ways in relation on users base growth. We deal with key players in the travel and photography industries like Travel Boards, Airlines, Hotels, Tours operator, camera producers, retailers etc.
Our Business Model does not propose to seek revenue from users initially, although a freemium model may be developed when additional features are available. For now we prefer to create value for our clients.
Initially we propose the PhotoMapping Campaign as a service to Tourist Boards, based on pilot ‘Discover London as a Londoner’ campaign and we have a number of such service proposals in the pipeline with a scalable pricing ensuring our service is open to even the smallest of Tourist Boards.
With the Crowdfunding money we intend to take the platform and functionality to the next level through marketing supported by recruited Travel Bloggers in our network. The primary target for the next months is to create a huge users base.
On blog.photospotland.com a selection of our media coverage.
on photospotland.com/ios our iOS Mobile app and on photospotland.com/android our app for Android but…be patience it’s a beta version, we work to make it great.
Company name | PhotoSpotLand Ltd |
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Investment range | 74.995 – 200.022 £ |
Equity offered | 5.41 – 13.23 % |
Price per share | 53,00 £ |
Number of existing shares | 24,752 |
Pre-money valuation | 1.311.856,00 £ |
Start date | To be announced |
End date | To be announced |
Location | London, United Kingdom |
Field of business | Internet Business |
Development stage | Seed |
Reference number | 717 |
www.photospotland.com |