WeTravel’s Product Team Needs You: Introducing the Innovation Council

Serving our clients’ needs should drive every product decision we make as a company. 

In that spirit, this month WeTravel has launched an Innovation Council – a forum for our clients to provide feedback on our existing product and, alongside our product team, to co-create new solutions that will amplify its value proposition and allow it to evolve alongside our industry. 

Over the past six years, we’ve transformed WeTravel from a toolkit for student & MBA travel groups to a fully integrated platform capable of powering the growth of multi-day travel companies globally.

Since our founding, our product development has hinged on a thorough understanding of our clients’ needs, which is why we’ve read (and re-read) our user surveys, public reviews, and support team’s chat transcripts. We’ve conducted countless interviews with clients of all sizes, business types, and geographic operations to analyze where and how WeTravel works well (and may fall short) relative to their business needs. And we’ve leveraged the insights from all of these interactions to inform our product strategy.

As we move into the next phase of product development – now as a platform used by thousands of clients, in every segment of the market from adventure tour operators to faith-based travel groups to wellness retreats and beyond – we’re further championing our clients’ unique insights and diversity of perspectives. We know, from years of experience, that we’re not the teachers, but the students; our product is built to empower our clients, and that’s best achieved when we intimately understand their operations and how WeTravel fits into the larger picture.

The Innovation Council is our team coming into the market not with solutions and answers, but with questions and a willingness to learn.

We acknowledge the many demands on our clients’ time, so we ask council members to commit to not more than one 60 minute (or shorter) session per month, with the understanding that many members may choose to participate in discussions only a handful of times per year. We ask only that they bring to the table an open mind and the willingness to evaluate new possibilities.

Periodically, we’ll share a list of topics that we are looking to explore through problem identification, the workshopping of possible solutions, and the refinement of a concept to a minimum viable product. When a particular topic is of interest to any individual members of the council, they are able to opt in to that “track” (each one led by a product manager within our team) for notification about related one-on-one or group discussions. Near-term topics of discussion among the group may include, but certainly aren’t limited to: 

• International fund transfers
• In-product messaging and other CRM-like functionalities
• The traveler experience from booking to departure
• Workflow automation, APIs & webhooks

Whether you’re new to our platform or you’ve been using WeTravel for years, we want to thank you for allowing us to be a part of your daily operations; our mission is to support and empower your business and we’re honored to be part of your journey. 

We’ll continue to accept applications to the council on a rolling basis. If you’d like to learn more or get involved, please fill out this short form to indicate your interest. We thank you for your passion about your business, support of WeTravel, and commitment to furthering the technology that will power our industry’s future.