Business and information cooperation in the area of booking of small accommodation online Wildacha (KA1020)

Wildacha.ru is online booking service for small accommodation facilities. The means of achieving the planned indicators is a successful pricing policy of the commission charged, the principles of legal business turnover between the owners of small accommodation facilities and tourists. The service is focused on wildlife lovers and "wild" rest on both sides of the finnish-russian border and is aimed at cross board socio-economic cooperation of the two regions – Finnish Karelia and Russian Karelia.

The advantages:

  • More than 350 cottages are already successfully cooperating with Wildacha;
  • All information on the service is presented in two languages - Russian and Finnish.
  • The service offers favorable cooperating conditions  for owners of cottages;
  • The service provides the possibility of online payment;
  • The service provides 100% booking confirmation, thanks to the well-established work of managers.

Project news

The project is developed by X-systems, LLC. 
The company was founded in 2017. ITN is 1001322796, address – Russia, Karelia Republic, Petrozavodsk, Lenin Avenue, building 11. The company was founded by Igor Semenov and Igor Kalyenen.

About owners

Igor Kalyenen. Graduated from Plekhanov academy, Moscow with MSc degree and Middlesex university with MSc degree, London. Igor worked in EuroFinance Mosnarbank in the direct investment department. Igor was engaged in own business - exporting lumber to Finland, buying and selling commercial real estate and development. Currently, business interests are focused on the tourism industry and commercial real estate. Igor owns Voyage hotel.
In the Wildacha project, Igor is responsible for the economy.

Igor Semenov. Igor has got Ph.D. in 2012 at Petrozavodsk State University. Igor is lecturer in Petrozavodsk State University on software engineering. Igor worked as a programmer in Metso Oy in department of automation. Igor participated in Nokia RnD center projects in the field of mobile platforms development. Igor worked as a director of the branch of Playrix (Europe’s largest gamedev company). Igor owns a software development and machine learning company - Technomedia LLC, founded in 2012 year. The company has 15 programmers. Our customers are such companies like the largest metallurgical company OMK, the largest coal company SUEK, the Skolkovo Foundation, the SKB Bank, and others.
In the Wildacha project, Igor is responsible for software development.

Partners:

Russia:

  • Petrozavodsk State Univercity
  • Tourist Information Center Republic of Karelia
     

Finland:

  • Karelia Expert Matkailupalvelu Oy (Karelia Expert Tourist Service Ltd.)
  • Oy Lomarengas Ab Ltd

Background and Justification.

One of the main business problems of the owners of small tourist accommodation facilities (guesthouses, mini-hotels, tourist camps, etc.) in the Republic of Karelia and in Finland is the low annual loading of the facilities (less than 50%). As a result, the owners have certain losses in their revenue.

Today, all small tourist accommodation facilities clearly lack an appropriate mediator. Mediation market is represented now by travel agencies with the simple booking instruments and information boards in the Internet. These agents of the tourist market work mostly without concludinga contract and with a high fee percentage - from 25% to 70%. 

It is worth to mention that according to the Russian regulations individuals are allowed to lease their own space and in fact many of them do this, but the existing booking systems, such as booking.com, stopped working with individual entrepreneurs in 2017. In addition, the conditions of reservation on booking.com do not protect the rights of small facility owners as tourists quite often book the facilities and do not arrive at all without paying any compensation.

The problems of Finnish small accommodation facilities are often similar to the Russian ones, but their main problem is the lack of tourists from Russia, thus they also need to be presented at the growing Russian tourist market. 

Also due to the lack of knowledge and skills the administrative staff members do not provide high quality call-services for customers and usually even do not give them knowledge on the rules of reservation and livingin the facilities, which may result in financial losses later. In connection with the abovementioned situation, the proposed project presupposes the creation of the booking and sales system wildacha.com for the Finnish and Russian small tourist accommodation facilities in Russian, Finnish and English.

The goal

The purpose of the service is to help the owners of cottages and guest houses in the development and legalization of their business and to create a reliable and easy service for searching and booking accommodation not only in Karelia, but also in Finland.

Planing and results

Now there are more than 350 facilities on wildacha.ru and we are planning to expand the base of small accommodation facilities. Besides we are going to develop a tourist map of Karelia, Russia and Finland (The picture shows map fragments for russian Karelia, the project is in development)

Igor Semenov
iosemenov@gmail.com
+7911 4131435

Igor Kalyenen
ikalienen@yahoo.com
+7921 7262850