Tasmanian web travel site, Travellr (who we’ve covered a couple of times), has announced they’ve received investment from the World Nomads Group (WNG).

WNG have travelinsurancedirect.com.au, worldnomads.com and suresave.com.au as some key brands.

While their bottom line is travel insurance, they provide free travel safety information, free language guides, and other resources for travellers, so it’s not hard to see why Travellr is such a good fit.

I managed to catch up with Travellr co-founder, Ian Cumming, to ask him a few questions about the deal:

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What can you tell me about the deal terms?
World Nomads Group are funding Travellr for two years, and our development team is moving to Sydney to work out of the WNG head office.

What’s the plan going forward?
Our immediate plans are to focus on growth by improving the core service, integrating it with World Nomads Group brands, extending its distribution through a public API and adding real-time functionality to the service.

The long term objective for Travellr is to build partnerships across the travel industry to provide a reputable pool of relevant, accessible travel-knowledge to assist travellers.

So will you be integrating Travellr into the WNG sites, selling travel insurance through Travellr or something else?

The real opportunity here is to tap into the travel knowledge of the customers in the World Nomads Group enhancing both the size and quality of Travellr while adding brand value to their network of sites. We do not believe selling travel insurance on Travellr or a straight advertising model is where the commercial opportunity lies, however we are not at a stage to announce our revenue model yet.

Will you maintain the Travellr branding or are you white-labelling the tech?
We’re still looking at the Travellr branding and how it fits in - but our focus is on Travellr is as a service, not a brand.

And you’ll be leaving your job at Insight4?
I actually decided to quit my management job last December and sold my belongings to work on Travellr full-time. I lived off my savings for six months and couch-surfed around Europe, SE Asia, and North America while working on Travellr from internet cafes and pitching to investors. That experience enormously changed my life and I learned a lot living with just basic necessities - especially the importance of focus!

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Travellr is a good example of how a tech startup can succeed in Australia with the right people, product and support.

Founders Ian Cumming and Scott Woodhouse are two smart guys with a relevant idea and the skills, experience and commitment to make it succeed.

To get to where they are today they received an AusIndustry COMET grant in 2008, were an ANZA Technology ‘Gateway to the US’company and won a wildcard spot for Webciety at CeBITthis year. They also received help on the deal from ANZAtech and Pollenizer.

Congratulations to Scott, Ian and the team. I’m looking forward to seeing how they progress with WNG’s help.

Social Travel site Travellr came out of private-beta today with an official launch at Webciety.

The site, which has been in private-beta for the past few months, aims to help people get local knowledge of the places they’re going to visit…not from a tour guide or a lonely planet book, but from actual locals who respond to community member questions.

Co-founders Ian Cumming and Scott Woodhouse have worked overtime to bring the site launch forward to coincide with Webciety, but at first play it looks ready to be public and there’s enough content to give people a feel for what the site will be good for when more people come on board.

You can check out the public Travellr site at www.travllr.com

Travellr, the travel social Q&A site which aims to give people local-like knowledge of locations all over the world has won the coveted wildcard spot for Webciety at next week’s CeBIT Sydney.

To find out more about Travllr you can check out some past posts we’ve done on the site.

Travellr now joins the following tech startups in promoting the local tech scene both during next week’s CeBIT conference and all over the world via the Webciety portal:

• Hiive Systems: A builder of web-based software for staff in professional services companies.
• Siteflex: The first Australian Web CMS to successfully integrate the Google Analytics Data Export API into both the Mailflex module and Siteflex itself.
• ModSite: Developer of interactive moderation tools for more engaging websites. See for more details;
• Saasu.com: An on-demand, online accounting portal.
• Buzz Numbers: A leading Australian social media intelligence platform enabling brands and businesses to monitor and report word-of-mouth conversations online.
• wotnews.com.au: A news search engine focusing on Australian business news.
• SportsPassion: Australia’s leading community sports-focused social networking service.
• Devnet Innovations: An advanced supplier of skills in the design and development of websites and in the creative application of Google maps and Search appliances.
• Design Bay: A graphic design marketplace that gives creative people opportunities and helps business get the best design possible.
• TJoos: A Sydney-based search engine for special deals and discounts from online merchants.
• IPScape: A company that makes Contact Centres work by hosting voice & data in the Cloud.  Clients buy the service on a per second usage basis.

You heard it here first - Travellr is now in PRIVATE BETA!

Yes! If you want to try them out just go to their SIGN-UP PAGE and enter the beta key: TECHNATION

Here’s some initial screenshots:

Think of  Travellr as stackoverflow meets thorn-tree - the whole system is question-centric and at the moment has about 50,000 locations in their database. I even was able to find Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan in the drop-down. If your location is not there at the moment you can easily add it via the feedback link and indicate “Missing/Incorrect location”.

Here’s the Media Brief via Scribd:

Travellr goes into Private Beta Media Brief

posted by Paul “The Pageman” Pajo

Ian Cumming and Scott Woodhouse, co-founders of Travellr, were kind enough to give TechNation Australia an email interview. Here we go:

Please tell us a little something about yourself, your hobbies, what you do when you’re not working on your startup?

Ian: This year I’ve been getting into diving - the water is really cold in Tasmania where we live so it takes a bit of determination to get in the water - but it’s so much fun! I also love to ski and spent my Australian summer with some mates at Niseko on the north island of Japan skiing massive powder runs non-stop every day! Best of all I love traveling! This year I’ve been to Vietnam, Cambodia, Japan, the USA, and will be heading off the the UK for New Years. I’ve made some truly amazing friends traveling and had some of the best experiences thanks to meeting locals!

Scott: Outside of Travellr, I’m a marketing consultant at In-tellinc - a Hobart-based tech incubator specialising in early stage startups. Like everyone at Travellr, I’m a big fan of travelling, and take time out for it as much a I possibly can (I’ve already blown this year’s leave out of the water almost two-fold with trips to the UK, Greece, France and the US…..will have to do some some serious negotiation for Christmas). My biggest love is whitewater kayaking, and I’ve toured the US and Canada twice paddling remote steep creeks and rivers. That said, some of the best whitewater in the world exists here in Tasmania….GO TASMANIA!

Any new games/sports you’re currently on that you think the world should know?

Ian: I think that everyone should know about bigstereo.net, my favorite music blog ever!

Scott: Um, the last computer / video games I played seriously date back to the late ’80s on my Atari 2600. If you’re looking for specifics, I guess that California Games, Dig Dug and Enduro Racer are hot favourites that I would’ve recommended to people around that time.

Ian: Travellr is a new online travel startup that will change the way travelers find the best advice and local knowledge about anywhere in the world. Travellr is a service that allows travelers to connect with like-minded locals and past visitors to get the most insightful, relevant, and personalized answers possible.

Scott: Travellr has five core people based in Hobart, with a growing network of advisors and correspondents scattered accross the world. We’re funded by local investors, including Ian’s company Insight4 - a software development firm, and In-tellinc. Right now we’re working hard to finish and launch the private beta by December, raising additional funding to assist with an aggressive product development and marketing strategy, and planning our move to San Francisco in early 2009.

Ian: The concept behind Travellr started out as an idea I had last year while I was travelling overseas. I bounced the idea off Scott and together we developed an initial business and marketing strategy around the idea of a building a service for travelers to be able to ask questions about anywhere in the world. We developed an early stage prototype at the start of the year and then raised some funding and applied for an AusIndustry COMET grant to get the idea off the ground. Last month we took Travellr to Silicon Valley as part of ANZA’s ‘Gateway to the US’ program (http://www.anzatechnet.com/) where we pitched to VCs and investors at Plug and Play Tech Centre’s Fall DEMO event (http://www.plugandplaytechcenter.com). We are now busy working on launching our private beta for December this year!

Scott: When you’re travelling, you just can’t beat local knowledge - it’s invaluable. And when you find it, it can totally make your trip. But unless you actually know someone who lives where you’re travelling, it can be very difficult finding qualified information that’s specific to your questions. Sure, you can trawl through review sites, forums, social networks and the like, but it’s a lot of effort, and there’s no guarantee that you’ll even find what you’re looking for. All you want to do is ask a simple question. This is the problem we’re solving with Travellr.

Scott: Initially Travellr will target backpackers and ‘flash’ packers (professionals who backpack), but the service solves a universal problem and we can see it being adopted by all people who travel. In the current economic climate, as people’s shrinking budgets cause them to research their travel more closely, a service like Travellr becomes increasingly valuable.

Ian: We’re still in the development stage of the project so you’ll have to check back with us in a few months to find out our uptake.

Ian: We’ve raised some initial early stage capital with assistance from AusIndustry’s COMET fund (http://www.ausindustry.gov.au/) and local investment, which has enabled us to put together marketing, technical, and business expertise to build the business. We’ve also sought out a some key travel and tourism advisors to help us out and provide additional insight to the team. We are currently looking at raising additional capital via angel investment to assist us with future product development and implementing our initial marketing strategy.

Scott: For Travellr, the biggest and most critical milestone is reaching critical mass - growing the community to a point where people can receive high-quality answers to their questions both a) quickly enough to be useful on the road via a mobile device, and b) from well-matched locals who share similar interests and characteristics. This high standard of user experience requires strategic distribution of users, not only by geographic location, but also according to profile.

Scott: There’s no question that online travel is a crowded (and competitive space), but by focusing purely on travel questions and answers, Travellr sits in a niche. There are a small handful of sites such as GeckoGo, STA Travelers and Lonely Planet that allow users to ask questions, but these guys play predominantly in the travel social network space, offering everything but the kitchen sink, including itinerary and media sharing, blogging and reviews. For them Q&A is essentially bolted on as an afterthought, and as a result is poorly implemented. And to be honest, who wants (or has time) to join yet another social network? I don’t want to post photos, make friends or share my itinerary - I just want to be able to quickly and easily ask locals questions to get information that’s valuable to me!

Ian: I like to think that entrepreneurship is the art of turning a great idea into an even better business.

Scott: Having the guts to believe in what you’re doing and fully committing to it.

Scott: Nothing really, other than maybe taking time to hang out in the US sooner. Pitching Travellr in Silicon Valley is definately the best thing we’ve done for the project to date. It was a good kick in the pants, and forced us to consolidate our core-value proposition, business model and message to investors. The progress we’ve made with Travellr since making the decision to take it to the Valley has been nothing short of remarkable, and we’ve been able to bring back a lot of energy and insight from the experiences we had on this trip.

Ian: Always be open to advice and criticism from others as this is free feedback that will help you improve your idea!

If you want to learn more about Travellr or just chat with Ian and/or Scott, try to bump into them at the upcoming Sydney BarCamp on November 15 at the UNSW Roundhouse.

interview and posted by: Paul “The Pageman” Pajo