\u201cAt that stage, I was doing all this just as a hobby for free, there was no cost. I didn\u2019t charge for the first year-and-a-half, two years. It actually came about from a Facebook post where I said, \u2018Thinking of charging \u20ac10 a year, I\u2019m going to quit my job, I want to go full time with this \u2013 would anyone pay it?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there were like 50 comments, people being like \u2018absolutely\u2019. So, for \u20ac500 I quit a really good job and went all in on it and I haven\u2019t looked back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indeed, Mr King has been looking up ever since Rory\u2019s Travel Club became an established brand, his subscriber base continues to grow and at the time of writing, the 33-year-old is closing in on 250,000 paid members, with the initial price point having shifted to \u20ac12 per year.<\/p>\n
The core concept is simple, inspire people in Ireland to travel more often and save a decent chunk of change along the way. So, what are you getting for your \u20ac1 per month?<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’ve now got two memberships,\u201d Mr King says. \u201cThe regular membership, we send two emails a week, and between 20 and 30 offers a week.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese offers could be hotel stays in Ireland, attractions, cruises, international holidays, family holidays, couples’ holidays. Our goal with every offer we put out is to save the customer much more than \u20ac12.<\/p>\n
\u201cA recent offer we did with Travel Department, a brilliant brand based here in Ireland, our members were saving upwards of \u20ac300 to \u20ac500 on a seven-night trip to Sorento per person. So, people pay us \u20ac12 and some of the couples save \u20ac1,200. It\u2019s a great return.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr King posits that a big part of the appeal of his travel club is the communal aspect, with people from all walks of life getting involved. \u201cEveryone, from really successful business owners to people that are retired, to students,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s quick to point out that he\u2019s no matchmaker, though it\u2019s not unusual for romance to develop on one of his trips. \u201cIf you\u2019re bringing like-minded people away to travel and they\u2019re having great fun, the craic is good, they\u2019re in a beautiful place and if there\u2019s people who are attracted to each other and they find a spark? We\u2019re all for it,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
The customers appear to be happy, but what about the man running the show?<\/p>\n
Mr King intends to visit every country in the world, and he wants his club to stretch as far as possible, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur goal is to get a million customers,\u201d he says. \u201cThe UK market is 10 times the size of Ireland so I am 100pc sure we will get a million customers. And if we don\u2019t get it in the UK, I\u2019m confident and comfortable enough that I can go to the US, I can go to Australia, I can go to New Zealand.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, in terms of that exponential growth, for us to get to 250,000 customers, it\u2019s something I don\u2019t take light-heartedly, I\u2019m extremely grateful and extremely thankful, but as we better our service, and as we give our customers more value, we\u2019re going to get more people signing up.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I think that we\u2019ve still a long way to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the full conversation with Rory King, check out Money Talks wherever you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n
The content of this podcast is for information purposes and does not constitute investment advice or recommendation of any investment product.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cAt that stage, I was doing all this just as a hobby for free, there was no cost.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":97011,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[61,60,898,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-97010","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-latest-news-ticker","11":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}