You are an online travel pioneer, having founded travel.ch in 2000 and successfully exited it later. How did you enter this field?
I followed a traditional career path in tourism with an apprenticeship. In the late 1990ies, I was doing product purchasing for a tour operator, mainly hotels. In other countries such as Sweden, there were already first digital travel offerings, but we were still printing catalogs in Switzerland. The opportunity seemed clear to me, but my employer didn’t want to invest in this field. This is why I started travel.ch myself.

What did you do in the beginning?
At the start, travel.ch was a website to compare last minute offers. Travel agents received last minute offers once per week via fax and we scanned them and put them online. It wasn’t even possible to book online on travel.ch, we had to do bookings manually first. Later we built the connections to tour operators and our model gathered traction rapidly. At one time we had two or three times the online booking volume of Kuoni, the most advanced big player in the market. That is why the competitor Hotelplan wanted to buy travel.ch.

In 2000, the internet was young and people were skeptical about doing transactions online. How hard was it to start a digital business then?
It wasn’t obvious like it is today. Clients had to be convinced. Most didn’t want to type their credit card details into an online form, so we had to call them by phone and take their details. We also called every customer to confirm a booking and send them the confirmation by post. An email wasn’t enough at that time.

What changed that gave people more confidence with online businesses?
It was mainly the low-cost carriers EasyJet and Ryanair that pushed online bookings to the masses. They offered to book online and by phone but charged extra for the phone channel. That was how people got used to booking online. The second change came when e-tickets were introduced with traditional airlines. These also gave a boost to online booking eventually. But in the beginning, people didn’t get it. They called us to say that they just received an email with a reservation number. Only a paper ticket was a real ticket to them. But over time, they also got used to this.

Eventually you sold travel.ch to the incumbent Hotelplan. What are your learnings from this exit?
The contracts stipulated a very long earn-out phase of 5 years. This was a golden cage for me because we were profitable and doubled our numbers every year. During this time, I reported directly to Hotelplan’s CEO, Christof Zuber. I had carte blanche to run the business as I saw fit. But then a new management crew came in and started to curtail my freedom. That was the time to leave, even if leaving the company that I had built was a hard decision.

What is the most difficult part of letting go?
It’s not the company, it’s the team. In a startup, your core team members become companions over the years. It’s them that you leave, and it’s them that you disappoint by leaving. In hindsight, I should have built up a successor in the company. A few years after I left, almost all of the original team members were gone. Eventually, Hotelplan shut travel.ch down. That’s the problem with big companies buying smaller ones with the goal to become innovative. It often fails. I was always told that Hotelplan earns its money in its branch offices that employed 400 people. Our online model was a direct competitor to them. We were the bad guys.

After your exit, you became a business angel. Why not just retire with the money and lead a carefree life?
I was 35 when I received the first tranche of the earnout. That was when I started to invest in startups. GetYourGuide was among my first investments. At 42, when I left Travel.ch, I was too young to retire. I needed a break though and I traveled for half a year, but I already knew that I wanted to continue investing and consequently became a full-time business angel.

GetYourGuide became a unicorn in 2019 when it raised USD 484 million. You were one of the first outside investors. Was that luck or intuition?
The founders had an idea they wanted to present at a business plan competition. They asked me per email if I wanted to give them some feedback as an expert. I said ok, and we met and talked for two hours. I thought that that would be it. But two months later they came back and told me they really wanted to go ahead with their idea and that they’ve already built a prototype.
I agreed to do a small investment and join the board once the company was set up. Florian Dünner from ZKB Start-up Finance, which invested as well, urged me to invest more. He said they wanted to see a bigger commitment from me. So that’s what I did, and it turned out well. Travel.ch was able to bring them business early on, as many of the people who booked a city trip also wanted to book one of the activities that GetYourGuide offered.

After almost six years, you left the board. Why?
Startups need different board members in their different development stages. New investors joined, and they wanted board seats. Whoever writes the biggest cheque thinks they have the most to say. They treat you nicely, but they don’t listen to you. As an angel investor, you become a legacy in their view. I also saw my role changing. I’ve been with the entrepreneurs since the start and they’ve trusted me, which is why I became more of a mentor and was able to mediate in difficult situations. VCs are generally less sensitive.

What emotion does that evoke when one of your startups grows so big?
I’m very proud, of course. When a startup evolves to the point that you can visit the company offices and people who greet you don’t have a clue who you are, that is a magic moment. I regret having sold my shares too early, but that is the fate of the angel investor. At a certain point, the cap table needs to be cleaned and you get bought out. But still, it would have been nice if I would have kept at least a few shares from the start to the point of an eventual IPO.

Now you have invested in the outdoor activity platform CheckYeti and will join the board of the startup. When did you first hear of CheckYeti?
It was about three years ago, and I wasn’t convinced at the time. They were very much focused on ski schools, and I thought that this was a difficult market because of the seasonality.

What convinced you to invest now?
CheckYeti managed to build up a significant summer business and isn’t dependent on the winter season alone anymore. The second argument that convinced me are CheckYeti’s repeat customers. This is a stark contrast to city tours. If you’ve visited the Eiffel tower, you’re not doing it again next time you’re in Paris. But if you send your kids to the ski school once, you’re likely to do this for many years. CheckYeti’s numbers confirm this. I like a recurring business. Skiing being an expensive sport has an advantage too. The average basket size of a single customer in CheckYeti’s outdoor market is around 3 times higher than the one of city tours where GetYourGuide is active. And higher basket sizes means more commissions for the platform operator.

Both CheckYeti and GetYourGuide are travel tech companies. What is the difference between the two, and where do you see similarities?
Both are platforms whose value stems from the consolidation of a large, fragmented offer. Clients are attracted by the possibility to easily compare these offers. But the two platforms have a completely different product. One offers short tours in cities, and the other outdoor activities, many of which take a whole week. From my experience, CheckYeti will be able to increase their commission while they grow and become dominant. I saw that happening at GetYourGuide. And there is a huge opportunity in the equipment rental business. Nobody cares if the city tour bus is a Volvo or a Setra. But people do care a lot about snowboard brands like Burton or surfboard brands like Firewire. This gives us plenty of opportunities to partner with equipment manufacturers and offer equipment rental on top of the activity booking, as well as other possibilities we’re exploring.

What do you contribute to the board of CheckYeti?
I know how to balance the supply and demand sides of a digital platform when it grows fast. Execution is still the job of the management, but as a board member, you can encourage or caution them. I have three decades of experience in the travel industry and have built an extensive network. CheckYeti has already integrated its offering into Booking.com, but there are many other interesting partners that I know.

What do you like most about being a business angel?
Working with young founders exposes you to many new ideas, and often you see interesting models several years before the public takes note. It is also a way of giving back. As a founder, you feel incredibly lonely sometimes. I’ve been in this situation and know how important it is to have people you can exchange ideas with. This doesn’t mean that you know everything better as a business angel. Entrepreneurs need the courage to try things out and make mistakes.
You can try to limit the potential damage, but you also need to learn when it is worth intervening and when it is not. Some investors start to lose it if a startup is 10% below budget. These are the worst people to have around.

Let’s talk a bit more about useless people.
In the startup world, you have to be flexible and adapt. The business plan of a startup is a good guess, nothing more. People who have spent too much time in the corporate world don’t get that. They tend to be formalistic and expect everything to be perfect. I tell founders that they should be either programming or selling. Everything else is a lower priority at the beginning. Over time they will need to establish structures, but they shouldn’t lose time early on.

You have a lot of startup investments and are active in several boards. How do you decide where to put your energy?
I don’t touch industries I don’t understand, fintech or insurtech for example, and I’m reluctant to invest in hardware because it takes a long time to develop. I invest early where I can add some value with my experience.

Viselio, a startup that makes visa applications easier, recently raised CHF 3 million. Viselio has been founded by your son Niklas Zeller, and you’re the president of the board. How do these family ties work in a startup environment?
He has the enthusiasm and the energy, while I have the experience (laughs). We have clearly defined who does what, and I think the fact that he’s based in Belgrade with the team allows us to have a healthy distance. Sometimes, I think, we talk too much about business.

Why found a visa startup? There are already established players such as VFS Global.
If you ever had to apply for a visa for countries like Russia or China, you know how time-consuming the process is. Viselio automates the process and makes it very fast. VFS is active on the other side of the process, it is an outsourcing partner for governments.

Since you are deeply involved with travel technology: Which is the most important trend for tourism in the next decade?
My main investment thesis is that travel destinations will become the stars of tourism they deserve to be. A touristic city like Lucerne has the best cards in its own hand. They know where the people are coming from, they know all the suppliers like hotels and restaurants, and they know their attractions better than anybody else. A city or a region will become a central hub, into which the providers can connect, and it will serve this aggregated offering to a worldwide audience across different online channels. This, of course, completely changes the role of a tourism board and the requirements for people they hire. Standing at a booth at a tourism fair and printing some posters will not suffice, and the job of a tourism director will change a lot over the next years. Successful destinations will establish a powerful digital presence based on data, and they will direct what people visit. This trend will disrupt the booking oligopolies that have disrupted tourism in the past decade. This is urgent. I’m a member of the tourism board of Lucerne, and I hear the voice of hotel owners. They pay up to 30% in commissions to the booking oligopolies. This is killing them. If the destinations become the stars, this will change.