Fellow Shareholders,
As we near the midway point of 2019, I wanted to communicate with you and let you know a few things. We have spent much of 2018 working on getting costs in line, and while I’ll let you interpret financial statements as you see fit, I am very pleased with the amount of actual cash that has been saved throughout the last 17 months. There’s more work to do in this regard, but we can now move quickly onto our next goals.
We continue to cash flow from our existing business. While this business is very seasonal (slow in the 4th and 1st quarters) and is taking time to re-establish after 2017 it is a productive use of our time and energy. We are very proud to see our long-discussed project, ZoomedOUT, taking shape. This unique project gives us the firepower that we have been striving to bring to market. I am very proud of the website that we just launched. It’s a very in-depth look at the possibilities that ZoomedOUT provides us. The new site, along with the presentation materials, gives investors a sneak peek at the size of this market and the associated revenue potential. Granted, these are just projections but, they are compiled from industry facts.
I have 30 years involvement in room booking technology and tourism and the same question has always come up, “how do you compete with the likes of Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, etc.?” The simple answer has always been that we don’t. They are too big, have a stranglehold on market share, a massive budget, and an overwhelming number of customers in their database. Frankly, everyone else in the industry is left to fight it out for the scraps left behind. Or, they focus on a specialized smaller segment of tourism that the big boys didn’t have time or the inclination to touch. Our philosophy is: to do something niche, to live where the market leaders don’t, and to provide products that allow hotels and activity providers with the tools to compete with the big On-Line Travel Agents (“OTA”) on their own. There is still a market for these products, and we continue to provide these solutions while continuing to make sales and generate revenue.
However, we now have the answer to “how do you compete with Expedia”; head to head, on their own turf. But, step by step, attacking their weaknesses and creating a new playing field, a new interactive way that significantly changes the way that customers will book their travel. We are changing what they see. We are making it uniquely fun and exciting.
OTA’s have a business model that hasn’t changed in the last 20 plus years. Although efficient, the antiquated web model for all these competitors is still much the same. Enter the dates you’d like to stay and choose from a long list of hotel rooms based on price and a singular image of the property. Most provide an image gallery for the hotel, and some also provide a small list of “things to do”, along with a flat one-dimensional image of where your choice is located on a map.
ZoomedOUT will change the playing field forever. How? By giving our customers a 3 Dimensional (“3D”) look at the entire area to where they are traveling. Hotels, restaurants, bars, golf courses, arena’s, concert halls, banks, every business, and building imaginable in a tourist destination will be shown in 3D. Not only will we allow customers to see an entire destination in three dimensions, but we will also do so in a fun and entertaining presentation. Our customers will be able to conduct all of the business that they would otherwise use one of the old OTA models, but for the first time, they will be able to see what else is available surrounding their destination and make the best choices on where they want to spend their dollars.
Our revenue models are simple but plentiful. User acquisition is the key to the revenue strategies employed by ZoomedOUT. In order to create maximum adoption of our product and to open all possible revenue streams, we have a plan to create two distinct business models under one roof.
Model One provides all of these powerful tourism tools which we call the “Utility Feature”. The Utility is a tool to explore, learn, book, share, you name it. Alone, the Utility generates a revenue stream. But, and here is the exciting fun part, because the city is built and is made to be fully interactive, we have decided to add another wrinkle to this product that creates a very, very powerful revenue stream. Here, in Model Two, we create an In-App game. Our “Game” component aims to entice people to use the app every single day to conquer, team up, and potentially control the fates of a city in a game world environment and, of course, players will have the opportunity to pay to play. We will use tried and true game mechanics to attract and keep users and to get them to spend to speed up processes within the game. We believe that this two-in-one approach allows for maximum entertainment value and gives us the ability to be truly unique. Our goal is to be able to provide our users with a unique value in the Social Gaming arena, the ability to earn both tangible and intangible rewards. Oh, and we plan to allow the highlighted businesses to participate through advertising.
We hope that everyone understands the power of app-based gaming, understands the amount of time that people of all ages are now using on their phones and tablets, and understands that people in today’s world are always doing multiple things at once. The industry analysts at Statista show that the online social gaming market revenue in the United States alone is expected to expand from $2.15 billion in 2017 to $2.4 billion by 2020. They continue to state that the majority of those revenues are currently and will continue to be, attributed to app-based social gaming, which is expected to account for nearly 84% of the entire U.S. online social games market in 2020. Additionally, Statista noted that time spent on mobile devices grew from 107 minutes in 2012 to 223 minutes in 2017. Our strategies are built around these simple statements, we strive to build a tool that can do two things at once, and not only serve two audiences but more likely create an audience that relies on one tool for two important needs.
We have a lot of work to do, we have the right experience, and the right team to get this done. As of right now, we are into our second phase of production but, still have a long way to go. Obviously, a product like this requires a significant amount of resources to build, and as with anything, the process moves faster with capital.
We appreciate the input and patience from our fellow shareholders and continue to strive towards achieving our goals reflected here.
Sean Schaeffer
CEO
Zoomaway Travel Inc.
