Planning to travel but still confused where to go? Want to travel the mountains but don't know where to start from? If your answer is a yes to both of the questions, then Alpine Guru is there just for you.
With Alpine Guru plan all sorts of holidays for yourself, from luxurious family ski trips to romantic mountain escapades, official weekends to a holiday in the lap of the earth. The database of ski chalets and hotels on Alpine Guru are personally handpicked by the co-founders. These are great locations with fantastic interiors. You just have book a chalet or hotel from the database present on the website, write in your details, no extra charges or admin fees, just the booking cost. Once you have paid the deposit, you can get in touch with Alpine Guru and get more details about your holiday.
The best thing about Alpine Guru that makes it different from other hotel booking websites on the internet is that Alpine Guru makes it a point to get in touch with all of their customers, understand them and their needs so that they can help them better. Read on to know more about Alpine Guru, in our exclusive interview with it's co-founder Oli Corkhill.
1. Oli please introduce yourself and the team at Alpine Guru to our readers and tell us about what you do.
I’m a co-founder of Alpine Guru. We’re an internet based travel company specialising in skiing holidays. Basically our goal is to find the right ski chalet or hotel for our customers.
2. What led to the inception of Alpine Guru? Is there a personal incident or event that sparked you to come up with it?
I’ve been obsessed by skiing and the mountains for as long as I can remember - and so has my business partner, Ant. We’ve been involved with ski schools and various hospitality roles within the mountains and felt that we could offer a high level of experience and personal service to this travel sector so we set out to do just that.
We search for the best ski chalets and hotels and only list the ones we like. Our difference is that we spend time with each customer to make sure we understand exactly what they want from their holiday so that we can suggest the right place and if we don’t have somewhere suitable we’ll tell them instead of suggesting somewhere for the sake of it. We can arrange pretty much anything from helicopter transfers and private jets through to budget boutique breaks and we’re on hand to help our clients before, during and after their holidays with whatever they need.
4. What were some of the difficulties that you faced in getting Alpine Guru up and running? This could be anything from getting the right people to finding a suitable provider to host the website.
The main difficulty has always been time. Starting a company like Alpine Guru is a long process and it’ll take many more years to build the brand and website. Because we’re a small business and we put so much emphasis on working with our clients we have to really prioritise the things we need to achieve (in terms of building / developing our website.)
5. Please explain to us how you went about building up your database of chalets and hotels? Was it all personal one-on-one communication with the various establishments?
Yes everything has been personal one-on-one communications, learning about the chalets and trying to present them as best as possible on our site. We write our own reviews and descriptions of each along with editing the images and categorising them to help our clients search for them more easily on the website.
We don’t charge any booking fees to our clients, nor do we charge chalets and hotels to get listed on our site. We make money by taking a commission when we sell accommodation and we also get commission by selling ski lessons, transfers and other extras that people might want on a ski holiday.
7. How has been the traction of visitors to your site? What sort of feedback are you getting from your users? What has been the biggest compliment that you have received so far for creating Alpine Guru?
We’re getting great feedback from our clients: they love the design and ease of our site, our honest and personal approach and our collection of chalets and hotels.
8. Being a start-up how are you promoting the site? In today’s eCommerce/mCommerce age what is the relevance of social media networks? Your views on word-of-mouth promotion?
Word-of-mouth is without doubt the strongest promotion we can receive and many of our clients refer their friends. We’re very active on social media, especially twitter and we’re getting pretty hot with our SEO although this obviously takes time to implement.
9. What are the future plans, as far as taking Alpine Guru forward? Do you plan to expand your operations to other regions/niches? Is the team working on any new functionality/concepts for Alpine Guru?
We have some ideas for different niches in the future but our focus right now is on making the customer experience and levels of service at Alpine Guru as good as it can be. Once we get this right and the volume up over the next couple of years then we’ll look at expanding further. We do have a Russian language website and plan to develop this over the next 12 months as we’re experiencing a great deal of interest from Russian speaking clients.
10. What other entrepreneurs do you look up to? What advice would you like to share with aspiring and budding start-up founders, to help them ease their journey?
The key is to work 365 days of the year on your business and have the drive and desire to keep working even when things are slow. I look up to a whole bunch of entrepreneurs and am really fascinated by the entire start-up community – it’s great to read the success stories but people have to remember that most so-called overnight successes actually took a lot longer than you might realise, so be ready to work and stick at it.
Thank you Oli for taking out the time and doing this interview with us. We wish you and Alpine Guru the very best for the future.
Alpine Guru is an online travel company that focuses on making your mountain holiday- the best holiday ever. Founded by Oli and Anthony, Alpine Guru is a UK based company that helps customers find the perfect hotel or chalet, they even help you with ski lessons and ski courses, helping you create a perfect mountain holiday or adventure. The duo founded Alpine Guru for one simple reason, their love for mountains and their willingness to use their knowledge and expertise to create the best alpine holiday.
With Alpine Guru plan all sorts of holidays for yourself, from luxurious family ski trips to romantic mountain escapades, official weekends to a holiday in the lap of the earth. The database of ski chalets and hotels on Alpine Guru are personally handpicked by the co-founders. These are great locations with fantastic interiors. You just have book a chalet or hotel from the database present on the website, write in your details, no extra charges or admin fees, just the booking cost. Once you have paid the deposit, you can get in touch with Alpine Guru and get more details about your holiday.
1. Oli please introduce yourself and the team at Alpine Guru to our readers and tell us about what you do.
I’m a co-founder of Alpine Guru. We’re an internet based travel company specialising in skiing holidays. Basically our goal is to find the right ski chalet or hotel for our customers.
2. What led to the inception of Alpine Guru? Is there a personal incident or event that sparked you to come up with it?
I’ve been obsessed by skiing and the mountains for as long as I can remember - and so has my business partner, Ant. We’ve been involved with ski schools and various hospitality roles within the mountains and felt that we could offer a high level of experience and personal service to this travel sector so we set out to do just that.
3. Tell us how Alpine Guru is different from the scores of hotel booking sites out there on the internet? Tell us how you guys help prospective holidaymakers by adding your personal perspectives/insights? Do you also help your users plan their vacations?
We search for the best ski chalets and hotels and only list the ones we like. Our difference is that we spend time with each customer to make sure we understand exactly what they want from their holiday so that we can suggest the right place and if we don’t have somewhere suitable we’ll tell them instead of suggesting somewhere for the sake of it. We can arrange pretty much anything from helicopter transfers and private jets through to budget boutique breaks and we’re on hand to help our clients before, during and after their holidays with whatever they need.
4. What were some of the difficulties that you faced in getting Alpine Guru up and running? This could be anything from getting the right people to finding a suitable provider to host the website.
The main difficulty has always been time. Starting a company like Alpine Guru is a long process and it’ll take many more years to build the brand and website. Because we’re a small business and we put so much emphasis on working with our clients we have to really prioritise the things we need to achieve (in terms of building / developing our website.)
5. Please explain to us how you went about building up your database of chalets and hotels? Was it all personal one-on-one communication with the various establishments?
Yes everything has been personal one-on-one communications, learning about the chalets and trying to present them as best as possible on our site. We write our own reviews and descriptions of each along with editing the images and categorising them to help our clients search for them more easily on the website.
6. Please explain your monetization model to us.
We don’t charge any booking fees to our clients, nor do we charge chalets and hotels to get listed on our site. We make money by taking a commission when we sell accommodation and we also get commission by selling ski lessons, transfers and other extras that people might want on a ski holiday.
7. How has been the traction of visitors to your site? What sort of feedback are you getting from your users? What has been the biggest compliment that you have received so far for creating Alpine Guru?
We’re getting great feedback from our clients: they love the design and ease of our site, our honest and personal approach and our collection of chalets and hotels.
8. Being a start-up how are you promoting the site? In today’s eCommerce/mCommerce age what is the relevance of social media networks? Your views on word-of-mouth promotion?
Word-of-mouth is without doubt the strongest promotion we can receive and many of our clients refer their friends. We’re very active on social media, especially twitter and we’re getting pretty hot with our SEO although this obviously takes time to implement.
9. What are the future plans, as far as taking Alpine Guru forward? Do you plan to expand your operations to other regions/niches? Is the team working on any new functionality/concepts for Alpine Guru?
We have some ideas for different niches in the future but our focus right now is on making the customer experience and levels of service at Alpine Guru as good as it can be. Once we get this right and the volume up over the next couple of years then we’ll look at expanding further. We do have a Russian language website and plan to develop this over the next 12 months as we’re experiencing a great deal of interest from Russian speaking clients.
10. What other entrepreneurs do you look up to? What advice would you like to share with aspiring and budding start-up founders, to help them ease their journey?
The key is to work 365 days of the year on your business and have the drive and desire to keep working even when things are slow. I look up to a whole bunch of entrepreneurs and am really fascinated by the entire start-up community – it’s great to read the success stories but people have to remember that most so-called overnight successes actually took a lot longer than you might realise, so be ready to work and stick at it.
Thank you Oli for taking out the time and doing this interview with us. We wish you and Alpine Guru the very best for the future.
Do they help you plan everything like package deals including the travel, the hotels the food etc?