Adventurer turns passion into career
Print Edition
For 28-year-old entrepreneur Shao Binbin, it was a passion for globe-trotting that led him to start his own travel business.
“I have many travel experiences that I’d like people to encounter as well, and I think that the travel industry is a big market that has room for many players,” said Shao, a seasoned adventurer who prefers going off the beaten path, such as traveling to countries like Iran and Bolivia.
Compared to regular travel companies in China, which often arrange rigid itineraries for groups, Shao’s company, Directions, deviates from the norm by offering free and easy travel experiences for customers.
The company comes up with travel packages that include flight tickets, accommodation, local transportation and self-designed guidebooks that grant travellers the liberty to plan their own itinerary without the logistical hassle of arranging for transport and lodging.
“Nowadays, many people in China like travelling independently and not in groups. They like to feel free while touring a country,” commented Shao.
The guidebooks are created based on travel experiences of employees and the company also consults Chinese nationals who have lived overseas.
Directions mostly offers packages to countries within Asia like Japan and Thailand, but has also come up with itineraries to countries halfway around the globe like Iceland and Peru.
Shao, a law graduate from East China University of Political Science and Law, founded Directions in 2014 with two friends, and initially found that starting a travel business was no mean feat.
“We each had limited or zero experience in the industry when starting out, so we had to get contacts and learn the ropes from them,” said Shao, who had tried his hand at running a student travel group while in university. The trio sank over 300,000 yuan (US$45,000) out of their own pockets into the business.
Six months later, an investment company, Gobi Venture, funded them with about three million yuan. Since then, the company has expanded to about 15 employees.
Directions was formerly based at Innospace within the Knowledge & Innovation Community, and Shao is grateful for the opportunities that the business incubator has provided: “Innospace provided entrepreneur courses for us. We were surrounded by like-minded entrepreneurs, so it didn’t feel so lonely when we were pursuing our goals.”
The company moved to an independent office in July last year.
Last week, Shao was invited to attend the Forbes 30 Under 30 Summit in Singapore — an event that highlights 300 young leaders and entrepreneurs across Asia changing the faces of their industries in the region.
There are plans for Directions to further establish a foothold in the industry. For now, Shao is taking it one small step at a time, focused on trying to improve the product of the company. He plans to make travel guides more informative so that customers need not have to rely on other guides. As things currently stand, it seems like the budding entrepreneur is on the path to be the next big thing in the travel industry.
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