Interview: Zozi CEO on the Key Challenges Faced by the Tours Sector

Last month we released a report in the Skift Trends series, Future of Tours and Activities Tech and Marketing. Below is an extract. Get the full report here to get ahead of this trend. T.J. Sassani is CEO, Chairman and Founder of Zozi, a company that offers a backend reservation management and payments platform for tour operators, plus a consumer-facing tour marketplace. Below are the highlights of Sassani’s conversation with Skift about key challenges faced by the tours sector, how his company is addressing some of the challenges, and how tour operators should think about effective mobile experiences for consumers. Get the Full Report Skift: Where does Zozi’s business fit in the tours and activities ecosystem? T.J. Sassani: Our model has evolved quite a bit over the years. What we’re focusing on now, and what’s really catching a lot of steam, is a two part model similar to OpenTable. We focus first on getting businesses on our SaaS (Software as a Service) platform, and we call that “Advance.” Online bookings, payments, reservations, mobile payments, etc. ... We’ve got several thousand businesses using the system now across about 90