WholeTravel.com launches: Q&A with CEO Matthew Davie

What would you like to do — take a safari, volunteer in a community, trek up a mountain, take a language class, try a zip line, relax at a health spa or even seek out a new destination to go fly fishing? Now ask yourself: Would you like to do that by the beach, in a rural setting — and in what country? Whole Travel jumped into public beta Tuesday and brings thousands of global accommodations to travelers where they can take part in these activities while at the same time educating themselves on the level of sustainability from four different points of scale: environmental, economic, social and cultural and customer interaction.

Whole Travel asks, “What’s your grand adventure?” I look at it from the perspective of, what’s my next grand adventure. Welcome CEO Matthew Davie to get us more familiar with the site.

Jen Leo: First of all, congratulations on bringing something different to the travelsphere, Matthew. It’s tough for travel websites to be unique when new ones are popping up monthly. Can you give us a little backstory on how Whole Travel came about?

Matthew Davie: The Whole Travel idea originated from a class at the Stanford Graduate School of Business with two MBA students and me, an Environmental Engineering PhD.  We developed the idea, ran through all of the scenarios in a mock setting and performed a massive amount of research. And we quickly realized it was an opportunity we couldn’t pass up. The Whole Ranking system was later developed and perfected by our in-house sustainability specialist, Pam McLeod, who now heads our partner nonprofit, the Whole Travel Foundation. And here we are today, launching a website and a concept we are truly proud of.

JL: One of your main differences is the “Blue Sky” search functionality. Can you explain to our readers what this means, with examples of how to use it on Whole Travel?

MD: Absolutely. Blue Sky search allows consumers to search without parameters.  Travelers are no longer constrained by dates and locations or even a finite list of activities. We encourage travelers to dream of their next great adventure and Whole Travel’s Blue Sky search will return relevant results. Try typing “experience of a lifetime” or “serenity” into our search bar and let your trip begin. You may find your dream adventure in a place you never imagined. Whole Travel offers hotels and resorts that are not found on any traditional travel search site.

JL: Matthew, I agree that your site is opening my eyes to properties I’ve never seen or heard of before on other travel websites, but I also get excited when I see a familiar brand as well. Can you give us some examples of hotels and resorts we won’t find on other travel websites?

MD: Sure. With this beta launch, we focused on the hard-to-find properties to enable travelers to discover unique and exotic travel opportunities they wouldn’t be able to find elsewhere. That said, we’re already reaching out to the major hotel chains to help them work on sustainability. They have a lot of properties worldwide, and we hope to make a big impact by working closely with them. We’ve already started this with Starwood Hotels & Resorts - they’re just launching Element Hotels, a new group of branded properties focused entirely on sustainability. As wholetravel.com continues to expand, I’d expect to see many more familiar hotels and resorts on our site as they continue their sustainability efforts.

JL: I found it a little challenging to think up cool things to search for. “Organic coffee farming” only delivered two results, but something like “spa” brought up heaps, as did “romance,” which I then narrowed by clicking “beach” for terrain and Mexico for destination. Can you tell us what your favorite search terms are?

MD: I like to start broad, with the type of experience I am looking for.  Some of my favorites are:
“white sand”
“crystal clear”

“wine”
“fly Fishing”
“relaxing”

JL: After I got my results and loosely chose some amenities, I sorted the search results by the “Whole Ranking” that measures the sustainability. Who is finding and measuring these accommodations?

MD: We have over 4,000 hotels on our site (and growing). Ranking the hotels on our site is a three-stage process. First, we personally identify accommodations that have shown some signs of being sustainable. Then we reach out to them and ask them to complete a sustainability questionnaire. We then give them a score based on their self-assessment. If the score is high enough, they are listed as a hotel property that our users can search, but the hotels are given the tag “self assessed” until we follow up with an on-site walk-through with the supplier to confirm their answers.

We work with our partner nonprofit, Whole Travel Foundation, to Whole Rank the accommodations. Once the hotel has Whole Travel’s stamp of approval, we remove the “self-assessed” tag. In the near future, a hotel may also come to our site and take the sustainability questionnaire on its own and if it scores high enough, it will get added to the database of hotels on our site.

JL: Some of the rankings are really similar — all categories are above 80%. Then other times I found properties where the Whole Travel rankings were abundant in one category and low on the others. What’s the bottom line that travelers should feel good about when choosing a sustainable accommodation?

MD: Any property that is Whole Ranked on our site has passed our minimum standard. Even a Whole Ranking of one “fleather” means the resort has taken significant steps to improve its sustainability. A traveler should feel good about choosing any of our hotels. For those travelers interested in specific aspects of sustainability such as protecting the environment or supporting the local culture, they have the option to make a choice based on their personal values. That’s why we make the details of how a hotel fares in the different categories transparent to the consumer. The Whole Ranking categories include: environmental practices, economic management, social and cultural support and customer interaction.

JL: Travelers are hearing the word “sustainable” more and more. What does it mean to someone who’s never taken an eco trip (and are the two the same in your eyes?)

MD: Sustainable travel includes an “eco trip,” but is not limited to just that. Typically an eco trip is a subset of sustainable travel that focuses on the environment or wildlife. A sustainable trip gives you the most authentic experience during your travels and includes not only the environment and wildlife efforts, but also how the hotel interacts with the local communities (i.e. does it hire locally?), social and cultural support (i.e. does it support the local culture?), and customer interaction (i.e. does it make efforts to educate its customers about sustainability?).

JL: Can you address the fear of what a traveler would be giving up to participate in sustainable travel — and the cost that would be added to travel this way?

MD: You really don’t have to give up anything to travel sustainably. At Whole Travel you will find a myriad of choices for accommodations in locations around the world, at all different levels of luxury and price ranges. Sustainable travel doesn’t have to mean sleeping in a tent or hut in the middle of the rain forest. We also include 5-star hotels that are environmentally and socially conscious. And many sustainable hotels cost the same as their non-green counterparts.

JL: And lastly, lots of your destinations are pretty far away. Do you have any tips or recommendations for budget-minded SoCal travelers? Are there any properties in the U.S., near the West Coast or Mexico, that got high Whole Travel rankings?

MD: Absolutely. Whole Travel offers a variety of experiences on the West Coast ranging from the low to high-end budget.

Costanoa – Half Moon Bay - $119 (Accommodations range from tent cabins to luxury rooms)

Treebones Resort – Big Sur - $155 (Ocean-view yurts)

seven4one - Laguna Beach  - $275 (Luxury boutique beach hotel)

Orchard Garden – San Francisco - $359 (Third hotel in the U.S. and the fourth hotel in the world to be LEED certified)

JL: Those are properties I’d like to find out more about. When I searched for the property titles “Castanoa” or “Treebones Resort” they didn’t come up in the search results. Orchard Garden did, but not the others, nor when I searched “Half Moon Bay” and “Big Sur”. Is there a trick to using the search function?

MD: Our search engine is definitely a shift in search paradigm, but we’re working to make it as intuitive as possible. With this initial beta launch, we’re really focusing on refining the search function, learning what consumers want from our site and improving the overall experience on the site. With our international focus at launch, which is rapidly growing to include more domestic properties as well, I think the trick is to try a few searches and see what you find. We’ve got feedback boxes on every search results and details page, so please keep giving us your thoughts - we do read all the comments and we’re working diligently to improve things as quickly as possible! Also, any new hotels that are added may take up to a couple of days to index.

Great — thanks for your time and insight, Matthew. Best of luck with the launch.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 1, 2008 at 2:23 pm by Jen Leo and is filed under Eco-Travel, Global, Luxury Travel, News, Tips & Advice, Travel Q&A, Travel Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.