Targeting international travelers in Russia, WhizzMate provides them with a smart package of essential services. It focuses on personal interaction and addresses real-life questions faced by international visitors daily: where to stop for a meal, how and where to exchange money, what are the opening hours of museums, galleries, department stores and many other problems.
One of the main inspirations behind WhizzMate, is that the team who created the service are avid travelers themselves — so they actually know firsthand about the difficulties facing travelers in a new foreign country.
"Sometimes these difficulties become real problems with high cost solutions. Therefore, it would be great to prevent them and be prepared for any situation," company founder and CEO Alex Khodorkovsky, who is an entrepreneur with 20 years of experience in inbound tourism as well as the hotel and restaurant industry, told Sputnik in an interview.
Another idea prompting the creation of WhizzMate was a wish to break stereotypes about Russia and a sincere desire to make travelers' experience as comfortable as possible, he added.
The Moscow-based travel startup is also building a network of local business partners interested in extending its products and services to foreign tourists:
"The concept is not only to make Russia cozy and friendly for foreign tourists, but also to promote local businesses: bars, cafés, restaurants, beauty salons. Becoming our partners, these local businesses offer WhizzMate's clients discounts and complimentary introductory offerings. It is useful for both foreigners and locals," Alex Khodorkovsky said.
Currently, the service is only available in English, but the company plans to expand it soon, adding Chinese, German, Spanish and Japanese which represent the fastest growing tourist segments in Russia.
"We decided to start with English, to fix all the possible bugs and then continue adding other languages according to their popularity. If we understand from the customer feedback that we have missed something, we will be sure to add it. Our main task for the future, on which the team is working right now, is to create a WhizzMate mobile application," the company founder told Sputnik.
Since the product only launched in the middle of August 2016, the service still has quite a modest numbers of users. "But every week we get more new customers. The growing network of WhizzMate partners helps us with that. We are already cooperating with Accor Group and Kempinski hotels, Europcar Russia, as well as other partners," the businessman explained.
"There has been lots of interest from the Department of National Policy, Interregional Relations and Tourism of Moscow City. In the nearest future we plan to conduct a joint campaign for foreign visitors to the capital," Khodorkovsky told Sputnik.
As the FIFA World Cup is just around the corner, the WhizzMate team anticipates an increase in the flow of tourists.
"We are going to experience the particularly high demand from foreign tourists during the World Cup 2018. The service provides an additional sense of security and "insurance" in case of any trouble, which, unfortunately, go hand in hand with major sporting events, especially such emotional ones like football. WhizzMate will become a reliable friend that will help you get the most out of your holiday!" the company CEO concluded.
