Hate planning vacations and love surprises? Good news: There is a new service in Kyiv that will plan an entire trip to a mystery destination based on one’s budget.
The startup, called Secret Ticket, provides its customers with an envelope just before the trip. Inside are two-way tickets to some place in Ukraine, a booking confirmation for a hotel, and tips on what to do once there.
The people behind the startup, Tania Kosianchuk, 25, and Serhiy Klepyk, 29, announced the launch of Secret Ticket on Facebook on April 17. Then they worked for a month in trial mode, getting a feel for the market, seeing what clients wanted, and finding the best prices. The service went live on May 15, and the founders say it is already loaded up with orders.
Secret trip
Anyone in Ukraine can order a trip: Go to www.secreticket.com, click on the big purple button, fill in a short form, and wait for a call to confirm the order. There is no English version of the website yet, but there are only three questions: name, phone number and e-mail address. Foreigners can communicate in English, in which Kosianchuk is fluent.
The trips, which usually last two days, come in four price types: economy (Hr 1,090 for the first person, and Hr 790 for each other member of a group), standard (Hr 1,890 for the first person, and Hr 990 for each of the other travelers), comfort (Hr 3,190 for the first person, and Hr 1,790 for each of the other travelers) and expensive (Hr 9,990 for the first person, and Hr 4,990 for each of the other travelers).
The price includes travel and hotel accommodation. The higher the price type, the better the level of tickets and accommodation.
Kosianchuk and Klepyk say there’s a simple secret to the success of their service: Ukrainians are tired of bad news, they want a bit of positive changes. What they don’t want is to deal with the nitty-gritty of a trip: choosing a hotel, booking tickets, and planning where to go, what to see, and what to do.
Kosianchuk came up with idea in January, when she heard about a similar service in Spain. Soon after that she discussed the idea with Klepyk.
“Serhiy thinks the topic came up by accident, but in reality I’d wanted to talk to him about it for quite a time. We worked together, he’s a great designer and I know I can rely on him,” Kosianchuk says.
Careful planning
Klepyk and Kosianchuk work hard to make their clients happy. Before choosing a destination, they ask their clients where they have already been and what their preferences are like. Then they get down to planning the trip.
“We want to promote not the popular places, but ones that are less known to Ukrainian travelers,” adds Klepyk.
But even if Secret Ticket sends clients to a big city, they advise them to avoid the usual tourist hot spots, and gives them information about the places the locals favor.
Typical clients of Secret Ticket are couples in love, or people buying a present for their relatives or friends.
The founders of the startup say their best experience so far was to arrange a trip for an elderly couple from Kyiv.
“They called us and said that all their life they’d put off any kind of travelling, and now they wanted to take their last chance,” Kosianchuk says.
Some people want everything about the trip to be a surprise.
“Recently one customer called us and asked to put tickets in one envelope, and the rest of the information in another. He said he would ask friends to put him on the train blindfold so he wouldn’t even know where he was going.”
The number of clients using the service is growing rapidly: Last week Klepyk and Kosianchuk sold four secret trips, and this week 15. The next step for the pair of founders, who are full of enthusiasm for their new venture, is to arrange trips abroad.
And the bigger they grow, the better, as 10 percent of the cost of each trip goes to charity — Kosianchuk is also a volunteer who works with children in orphanages.
Secret Ticket, www.secreticket.com Hr 790 — Hr 9,990
