organize and search the world’s transport information€¦ · north america europe flights 30,730...

Organize and search the world’s transport information

Multi-modal search

Today’s flight search works well

But it’s air only

Many real world itineraries involve multiple modes of transport

Figuring out all ways from A to B is challenging

Most travellers resort to Google (or Bing!)

More integrated ticketing of air / bus / train / ferry

Journey planning is the first step

Multi-modal transport database

Drive, walk, intra-city transit Google, Bing, OpenStreetMaps

Ferries Buses Trains

Flight schedules OAG, Innovata

Michael Cameron Senior Engineer at Microsoft Bing in Seattle PhD in Information Retrieval Bernhard Tschirren Senior Engineer at Microsoft .NET in Seattle Distributed data and architecture specialist

Rome2rio founders

Late 2010: Both relocated from Seattle to Melbourne to start rome2rio

Rome2rio history October 2010: Began development

April 2011: Launched beta site

May 2011: Continued improving coverage, accuracy

March 2012: Rod Cuthbert (Viator) joins as iCEO

May 2012: Raise $450,000 from local & strategic investors

Focus on B2B Build technology, not consumer brand

White-label and API integrations

User feedback, showcase through www.rome2rio.com

Remove dependence on Google technology

What? Routes, schedules, track paths, frequencies, durations, stop locations for trains, buses, ferries

Challenge: collect transport data

How? Feeds, licenses, APIs, website crawlers and manual data entry Where? Operators covering Europe, North America, Asia, Australia

Accuracy: Sensible, diverse, multi-modal routes with trade-offs between modes and transfers

Challenge: fast, accurate search Graph search: Flight paths, assemble itineraries, train/bus/ferry routes, driving paths

Speed: Sub-second searches

Challenge: user interface

Complexity: Multiple itineraries, each involving multiple legs with different modes of transport

Competitor: routeRANK

Zoombu (acquired by Skyscanner)

FromAtoB

White-label Dashboard for customizing look and feel Control over outbound links, use your affiliate codes

API Integrate into websites and phone apps Total control over look and feel Integrate with your existing search and booking systems Simple XML and JSON interface Low per query license model

Organize and search the world’s transport information

Revenue & non-revenue generating

results

Fast

Car

Rail

Air

Results for any query

Links to external

sites

Feature: air schedule assembly

Feature: trip sharing

Large city 59% Eg. Paris, Chicago

Small city or town 24% Eg. Eureka Springs, Agra

Country 6% Eg. Iceland, Tunisia

State or region 4% Eg. Florida, Maldives

Address 5% Eg. 411 B H Goethert Parkway

Attraction 2% Eg. Walt Disney World

rome2rio destination analysis

North America Europe

Flights 30,730 20,250

Trains 1,140 29,154 Passenger-kilometers * 17.21 bn 386.24 bn

Buses 6,453 N/A

Inter-city >70km (43 miles) trains and buses only Based on transport routes data in rome2rio database on 2nd Nov 2011 Flight = scheduled take off and land. Train / bus = a single scheduled run * Based on data from UIC database

daily inter-city transport

Transport APIs Data feeds

Track paths Station locations

Geocoder Bing / Google / Yahoo

Transport database

Manual data entry

Screen scraping

Consumer site

Multi-modal search engine

Partners API

Transport search Air, rail, bus, car, ferry

Anywhere to anywhere

Routes and schedules

Fulfilled offline or online

OTAs

Flight shopping

Airport to airport

Air routes only Airfares and schedules

Fulfilled as single ticket

Airport to airport

Landmarks

Country or region

Addresses