Tour Livestreaming Startup Heygo Taps Creator Economy for Revenue
Photo Caption: A scene from a live-streamed street tour of Accra, Ghana, on the travel livestreaming app Heygo. Source: Heygo.
Skift Take
The startup Heygo is like a "Twitch for travel" in the sense it's surfing the waves of interest in live-streaming by the creator economy. Destination marketers need to tune in.
When travel startup Heygo announced its $20 million funding round in mid-February, many people dubbed it a "Twitch for travel."
Twitch, of course, is a video broadcasting platform — best known for letting people watch and react to people playing video games live. Heygo is a similar platform, but it features people in 90 countries offering live, interactive tours.
People have booked more than two million live tours via Heygo since the London-based company was created at the start of the pandemic. For now, at least, it relies on the generosity of viewers to tip the guides, with the startup taking a small cut.
Some skeptics doubt if a dedicated online platform for travel infotainment can succeed.
There's competition, after all. Twitch has more than 300,000 people that have looked for its travel and outdoor streams, and the Reddit community offers spontaneous live streams dedicated to travel that are free, such as on its "where in the world?
