How Regional Travel Is Catching Up to Modern Expectations!

Duncan Riley (00:01.491)

Hello and welcome back to Building Momentum, the show where we pull back the curtain on the exciting and often chaotic world of building a successful technology business. I'm Duncan, your host for the show, where every episode we bring you the stories and strategies of people who've been in the trenches, conquering churns, scaling their teams, and building products that businesses love. I'm excited to welcome our next guest, Josh Volk the CEO of Park Booker, a platform that's transforming the way Australians discover

book holiday parks. Their purpose-built marketplace is bringing along overdue innovation to the space, helping travellers easily compare and book cabins, caravan sites and campgrounds, while giving park operators a smarter, lower-cost way to grow their online business. With over 140 parks on board and a platform designed specifically for the needs of this unique sector, Park Booker is quickly becoming the go-to destination

modernizing one of Australia's most iconic travel experiences. Josh, welcome to the show. Thanks for being on.

Josh Volk (01:05.25)

Thanks Duncan, great to be here.

Duncan Riley (01:07.347)

Yeah, well, it's a very, very interesting product that I guess service that you offer. Well, let's just start by asking that, you what's your story? What led you to start ParkBooker

Josh Volk (01:21.218)

Yeah, for sure. Look, so travel has been a big part of my life for really as long as I can remember. I grew up here in Melbourne in the city, but both sides of my family are from regional Victoria. So I spent plenty of time in the country visiting them and traveled around a bit when I was younger with my parents' work as well. yeah, travel is something I've always been passionate about during the COVID lockdowns like many other people.

We obviously had to look a little closer to home in terms of where we're going to travel. And yeah, that's when I really discovered holiday parks. There were a lot of, you know, places I wanted to visit and they were really the natural accommodation choice for getting there. yeah, despite feeling like I knew travel really well, I've always been the sort of travel planner amongst my group of friends. You know, the experience of planning and booking was really frustrating. Whether it was

know, direct sites being a bit clunky, inconsistent listings on some sites that had, you know, a few more of the holiday parks on board. You know, the biggest thing was that there just wasn't a clear place to, you know, to compare options and, and discover new, new places to visit, which was, yeah, exceedingly frustrating. And I think really didn't, you know, meet the expectations of where travel was at. And that was sort of 2020, 23, 24. So, you know,

Off the back of that at the time I was working, yeah, in a really successful consumer tech scale up. I was leading the product team there. I, you know, I for a long time, wanted to go and do something myself. And I think, you know, being there and witnessing that firsthand, you know, that company was called Sweat, which is a, you know, an incredibly successful Australian startup story. Yeah. Gave me the confidence to go out and build something myself. So before doing that, like, you know, any good product person, I started really digging into the problem, build a really awesome network.

talking to anyone who'd speak to me really starting with a few family friends who were really involved in the category, talking to their friends, did a, what was in hindsight, a bit of a silly road trip of covering about, I think we covered like 4,000 kilometers in eight days, which yeah, I wouldn't encourage in hindsight. That's probably poor road safety, but did that talking to a whole bunch of park owners, anyone who'd chat to us along the way and you know, it became obvious there was a huge gap and yeah, really the category deserved better and that's what led to Park Booker.

Duncan Riley (03:40.947)

Fantastic. suppose, you know, it's so for those that don't know Park Booker, those that are watching, you know, what is it? Would you say it's like an aggregator? Would you say it pulls in holiday parks world? you think it's the best way to describe it?

Josh Volk (03:56.685)

Yeah, I mean, we always start with Park Booker being the easiest way to discover and book holiday parks across Australia. You know, the easiest way to think of it though would be like a booking.com or an Airbnb, you know, booking for hotels, Airbnb for private rentals. But instead, you know, we're built up, built from the ground up for yeah, what is the unique world of holiday parks? That means we list caravan sites, campgrounds, cabins, the whole lot.

For travelers, we're a simple, trustworthy, unbiased place to compare options, read real content. We're heavily content driven and really lean on the fact that it is expert content to help you plan your travel. And of course, the key part, which is booking online. Then for the other side of the marketplace, which is our park partners, we're a modern partner. We help them grow. We bring in new customers. We handle the full booking experience and we collaborate with them on customer service as much as they'd like to.

and obviously integrate with their existing systems. think, know, overarchingly the business is really about building trust in what's a really fragmented category and making it easier for the existing market, whilst also, you know, it's really important to us that we grow the category and that means we really need to meet the expectation of the next generation of travellers.

Duncan Riley (05:13.179)

Yeah, brilliant. I love that idea. It's almost like unlocking assets that I guess people don't know about and that by asset, know, campgrounds, holiday parks, areas of the coastal country that people don't know about. And I think that that's what's really, really exciting, especially if you're driving content. And if know, for me that doesn't do, I guess all of the booking my fiance does, that would be amazing for her to explore.

Australia from one view which would be from Park Booker.

Josh Volk (05:46.178)

Yeah, and I think like many other industries, travel has just converged on focusing on capital cities, which is fantastic. you know, I wouldn't say that thing about any capital city in Australia, but there is just a huge, huge, huge regional travel industry that I think, you know, is starting to get the folks it deserves. But, you know, there's still long way to go in terms of elevating that to the investment level that the capital cities get.

Duncan Riley (06:13.171)

Yeah, definitely. I absolutely love the concept. guess, you know, starting up a business isn't easy, especially in the tech space. What would you say is your biggest challenge that you've faced in building Part Booker so far?

Josh Volk (06:30.272)

Yeah, it's a great question. Maybe I'll start with early on and I think that biggest challenge was building what we call the supply side. So that's the holiday parks. And that was realistically, we had to get agreements with parks to get them on the platform before we really had a product. So that was a challenge, you know, getting them to trust us, list with us and obviously share their availability so we could get their property online.

You know often they'll use various systems to manage their properties some still relying on pen and paper And the big OTAs online travel agents. I think booking.com Expedia, etc They focus on hotels, but they've dealt with the holiday parks in the past or some of them Which has usually been to just list their cabin inventory, which is sort of a bit more similar to a hotel room And sadly, there's just been you know

often poor experiences for the park operator with that. So they'd rightfully probably felt a bit burned by working with third parties. So yeah, I mean, we had to do the hard yards there in terms of lots and lots and lots of conversations. We were lucky to have, you know, a few really forward thinking folks who believed in us early on. And we could start to use even before we got the platform up, just as a bit of proof to say, you know, these groups joined us. And then at the same time, obviously, we're building the tech that worked around their systems and

A big part of our value proposition for the parks is that they are, generally speaking, often time poor people. You have someone who is the owner, operator, customer service, janitor, everything. So we do the work to get their listings live ourselves through writing our own copy, bring all that creative together, et cetera, et cetera. I think when the property started to see the effort we were putting in and...

you know, the passion and conviction we had around what we were building over time that tide did start to turn. And, you know, we've now seen some really strong early success stories, parks getting meaningful booking from us, and words starting to spread a bit, which is great. So yeah, as you noted before, we've got 140 parks on board now, which is growing every week. But yeah, it's is funny to think back early on, it was it was a real challenge just to often even get people to speak to us, I think.

Josh Volk (08:46.85)

I've never done so much cold calling in my life and I certainly off the back of that have grown a new found empathy for people who do that as part of their career. It's a character building exercise, that's for sure.

Duncan Riley (08:55.954)

Yeah.

Duncan Riley (09:00.414)

Yeah.

Definitely. It's difficult because you're almost, it's the chicken and the egg scenario. You want to get your listings on Park Booker, but you haven't got your, well, back then you didn't have your platform. And so it's kind of just selling a dream, but also you need to get the parks, the service providers before the consumer. But what I really, really, really like about Park Booker is you're not just offering value to the consumer, or the service

provider being the campground or holiday park you're actually providing value to both ends so that's what I really really love about the product. Yeah really really cool.

Josh Volk (09:43.362)

Thank you. Yeah, no, I mean, that's a big part of it to us as well. think we, you anyone who is running a business in this marketplace business model like we are, do obviously have customers on both sides and it's incredibly important to equally service both. And it's easy to get caught in, you know, focusing on one side over the other, but I think meeting that balance is obviously super important.

Duncan Riley (10:05.919)

Would you say there's a bit more of a pull in either direction? Do you feel like the consumer is getting more value or do feel like you're able to unlock a lot more business for your service providers?

Josh Volk (10:21.356)

Yeah, I mean, it's a really good question. And I think the potentially quite glib answer is it does work hand in hand because without the consumers getting value, the parks aren't getting value. A bit of a theme that people talk about in these sorts of businesses is what is the hard side of the marketplace. So is it harder to get, in our case, parks on board or consumers on board? And over time, you naturally...

Duncan Riley (10:23.196)

Okay.

Duncan Riley (10:33.81)

Yeah.

Josh Volk (10:49.912)

gravitate to the harder problems. I think that's just sort of part and parcel with trying to build a business and you know, and I think what speaks to the balance of effort and focus we have on each side is that that's changed constantly in terms of our view on what is the harder side. So yeah, I know that doesn't necessarily sharply answer your question. But yeah, no, we certainly believe that we can't drive value for one side without driving it for the other.

Duncan Riley (11:17.747)

Well, that makes total sense. It leverages both ends of the cycle, I believe. Fantastic. I guess, we've been chatting for a while, I necessarily, I love to go camping and things like that. I never heard of Park Booker, but what was the sort of big overarching problem that in your industry that you feel that you're trying to solve with Park Booker?

Was there a solution that wasn't there in the market and you wanted to fill that gap? What would you say that you're trying to solve?

Josh Volk (11:52.878)

Yeah, I mean, as a starting point, I think it's important to know that holiday parks are a massive industry. they're Australia's second largest commercial accommodation industry by guest nights per year. So around 60 million nights are spent in holiday parks each year, which translates to about $3 billion in booking revenue, which you know, they're big numbers. I always find a good way to sort of contextualize it is

think that if you spread that out evenly over 365 days a year, which of course is not realistically the case, but that would be about $8 million in booking revenue changing hands a day. So it's a big industry and despite being loved by millions of people, these properties remain often really hard to find and book online, which leads to frustrated travelers. think people are used to really slick.

hotel-like booking experiences, or you think of Airbnb again, which kind of takes that to a new level. And often for people who are new to the category, they can't understand why that just isn't the case here. And then on the other side, yeah, like I noted before, I think park operators have certainly been left behind by the generalist online travel agents. It's the whole sort of trying to fit a square into a circle problem where that is a world that is built for hotels. They have really successfully, and I think

know, these are like booking is a incredible, incredible business. And they've done a brilliant job extending into the private rental space and obviously, you know, competing really hard with Airbnb there. But, you know, that makes sense in that there is a lot more analogies between a hotel room and someone's apartment and there is a hotel room and, you know, a patch of dirt that you're pitching your tent on or taking your caravan to. So for park operators, you know, there's this problem of being smaller.

team-wise businesses and looking for ways that they can grow and whether it is lack of budget expertise, whatever it is, there's just not a platform that helps them really grow in a manner that is low cost to them. Like we only charge them for performance, right? We charge a commission on bookings or other fees. So that's a really important problem for us to solve, which is how can we...

Josh Volk (14:11.116)

you know, grow the business of the properties we work with, but also grow the industry in general, sort of, parking back to the first point I made there around, think there's just massive barriers for new travelers getting into the space. yeah, you know, we're a proper two-sided markets place that respects the specific category. We're not just opportunistically trying to extend a business into here. you know, we, we think that we help travelers feel confident booking any park, not just the big chains. We work with the big chains. They do an amazing job.

Duncan Riley (14:35.367)

Yep.

Josh Volk (14:40.3)

And often they are franchise businesses that come out of the big chains or smaller owner operators who are still running their business without a brand. we feel like we give them the same digital firepower, I guess, as their cousins in the hotel world get.

Duncan Riley (14:58.003)

Yeah, it's such a good concept. I really do like it. And I think, you know, the consumer just kind of wants ease of use, I think. And the fact that, you you can go from, you know, picking up your phone to a caravan park for a weekend in a matter of a couple of minutes, just makes, I guess, unlocking assets a lot more accessible through Park Booker.

which is awesome. I guess as well like what I was going to say is has your industry evolved? Is this a fairly new concept that's on the market at the moment or has it been around for a while?

Josh Volk (15:40.334)

Yeah, I we started work. I did talk before about sort of the idea came in COVID, then I said 23, 24, which I know was not the COVID years. That was actually the years, sort of there was a gap there between I did when we started. So yeah, we, I mean, I started working on this full time in the almost two years ago to the day. So the middle of 2023. We, you know, that obviously took a bit of time to shape out what we were doing, sign up the parks.

Duncan Riley (15:52.155)

Yeah.

Josh Volk (16:09.314)

first launched in December last year to customers. So that's seven months ago and the first few months was a closed beta as well, just because it was the, you know, a really busy time of year for the parts. We didn't want to be flooding them with new customers on a brand new system in a time where they're very distracted doing everything else. So realistically, we've been in market for customers since February this year, but obviously working on it for a lot longer than that.

in terms of the industry evolution since we started, because obviously we've been talking to the parks for that, that full amount of time. look, I don't think that the, on the sort of like traveler side, things have changed a heap in terms of their desires around flexibility, trust, easy ways to book and sort of, as I talked about before searching for, or wanting to be able to search these properties the same way they searched for hotel. you know, we believe we solve all these things, but we are.

so early in our journal journey that I wouldn't dare even suggest we're at the tip of the iceberg there, but I do have huge conviction we will be in a few years time. these problems are never solved. We will have started to, not started to, we will have made really great progress on solving these foundational ones and bringing that travel experience up to the level of their expectations. On the park side, I think we've certainly seen

Yeah, probably a bit more revolution. think more and more park operators are embracing technology, whether it is the tools they use to manage their parks, you know, things like what they call like yield management or revenue management, which is essentially how you change pricing, both going up and down depending on seasonality, demand, all those sorts of things, which has been in the hotel industry, I'd say for 40 years has become probably far more prevalent in this space, which is great. You know, we feel like we can

build our business to help with tools in that space in the future. And, you know, think a really interesting one to me, which is, you know, I think a theme across a variety of industries is there is a, bit of a generational shift happening. whether it is younger owners who, have taken over the family business or whether it is new entrants from, same thing, like younger couples who have decided this is a great lifestyle business and they want to go acquire and run.

Josh Volk (18:34.83)

holiday park, you know, I would speak to someone at least once a month who's new into the space in terms of having just acquired or are new to managing your property. yeah, I think all of that leads to really great tailwinds for a technology company like ours working in this space. And yeah, think moving forward, like any industry, I think you'll see it start to bifurcate further in terms of the ones that are, or the businesses that are.

wanting to sort of like modernize and lean on technology tools will thrive and those that resist that could struggle. So yeah, we'll see that we're certainly getting big on the first group though.

Duncan Riley (19:16.593)

Yeah, that's good. That's so good to hear. And as you know, you know, here in Australia, camping is huge. There's so much space. There's so much adventure that you can have. And it's a really good sort of product market for I think, you know, over here.

Josh Volk (19:33.868)

Yeah, yeah, I mean, Australia has versus the rest of the world, the the highest number of campgrounds, caravan parks, holiday parks, we sort of like lumped it all into one per capita. So it's certainly a great market to launch in. we're, you know, also really cognizant that there's a few other really great markets out there for us to expand into in the future too.

Duncan Riley (19:55.763)

And if, you know, I was going to say what's on the horizon for Park Booker? Is this, are you going to go global or would you cross the Tasman and have a look at New Zealand there or?

Josh Volk (20:08.046)

Yeah, I mean, the going across the Tasman is always the sort of like natural one you can gravitate to. We've got huge ambition to grow globally, but we want to get Australia right first. We think that because of the dynamics of the market here, will really help us build the playbook to help us expand globally in the future. And that's always a matter of timing. Like, I don't think you want to wait long enough that you miss the boat, but you also want to establish enough of a beachhead in your first market before you expand further.

So yeah, it's certainly something that's on our mind. It won't be happening this year, yeah, we will continue. Like it's something we talk about every month, so we'll continue to look at that. think, you know, particularly across Europe and the UK, there's some attractive markets for us.

Duncan Riley (20:45.98)

Yeah.

Duncan Riley (20:57.671)

Definitely, yeah, brilliant. All right then, now I just want to touch on the AI question if that's all right. Obviously, topic at the moment. Does Park Booker utilize any AI within your product currently? If so, you know, we'd love to hear about it. If not, yeah, are you going to in the future?

Josh Volk (21:19.712)

Yeah, I mean, if we think about it across sort of both sides of the marketplace, and then I guess our day to day workflow as well, despite the fact that we're not out there pitching ourselves as a AI led business, it's certainly, you know, is something that we're using to improve both sides of the marketplace and our own operations as well. You know, on the traveler side of things, we're really early on, but the proprietary sort of data structure we've built

is, and we're not sort of, we haven't really geared up product features around this yet, but it has certainly been built with, with leveraging AI in mind and whether that's around, you know, you go to the really traditional stuff of better recommendations, smarter search results. Ultimately, it's just about connecting the connecting the customer with what they actually want at any given time. But we think, you know, it's more than that.

beyond just sort of improving personalization. think, you know, the sort of like the number one thing I come back with is come back to is that right now I feel like there's every chance AI will sort of like flip the way that the travel funnel exists currently, particularly with kind of the emergence of agentic AI and how do people, you know, discover new things without actually sort of moving through that traditional funnel. So we'll see and we've...

We've certainly built our product to be, you know, answer edge and optimize the sort of new thing for the new SEO, I guess. And yeah, on the park side, we were already leveraging AI in terms of sort of bridging the gaps in data that exists to interpret that fragmented data, clean it up, pull those inconsistent listings together, make it all very park bookified, I guess, which ultimately obviously serves the customer as well.

Duncan Riley (22:53.724)

Yeah.

Josh Volk (23:15.046)

And that links a into the tooling we're using in the business as well. So, yeah, whilst we're not a, you know, parkbooker.ai, we are, it certainly is, yeah, something that is, you know, it's within the DNA of our business. And I think it's another thing that provides us a great opportunity to lean into moving forward.

Duncan Riley (23:22.129)

Yeah.

Duncan Riley (23:33.651)

Before we wrap up Josh, if any of our audience are watching this and want to get in touch with you or Park Booker, what's the best way that they can reach your product or yourself?

Josh Volk (23:49.676)

Yeah, sure thing. I mean, if they're a holiday park traveler or just looking to maybe become a holiday park traveler, parkbooker.com is our website. You'll hopefully find what you need there. If you don't, you can send myself an email or if it's about anything else as well, send myself an email. I get back to most everyone who contacts me, josh at parkbooker.com.

Duncan Riley (24:14.577)

Yeah, brilliant, Josh. Well, it's been absolutely fantastic having you on the show and learning more about Park Booker, a very unique product and serving a lot of campers and a lot of, I guess, tourists here in Australia. We really appreciate your insights and the work you're doing is brilliant. If you found this conversation useful, consider giving us a like or subscribing if you're watching on YouTube. And if you're listening on Spotify, we'd love if you hit that follow button.

future episodes. Thanks for tuning in and we'll see you next time. Thanks Josh.