My name is Stephan Ekbergh. I’m the founder of Travelstart. I started the company in the beginning of 1999 after working with various ventures throughout my life as an entrepreneur. I started the company because the opportunities existed to leverage on what I knew about travel from many years in the industry. My primary driver was of a different sort; I needed to provide for my family. I also knew that the Internet would change the dynamics in the industry and that new cards where given to various new players. Having been in the industry for years I figured we could perhaps make a change and a contribution if we played our cards well and differently.

We started our days in a former coffee roastery in Sweden, with no money. We managed to squeeze suppliers and get good credit, and with a bit of help from clients prepayments we managed to build ourselves some start capital.

After a year, at the height of the dot COM explosion, I was promised more money that I could ever dream of by a German online discounter. So I sold my baby. After a rocky 18 months with our new owners, they found themselves out of cash and out of hope. I managed to buy my company back and made a commitment to try to do the best I could to build a sound company that others and I wanted to work in.

No matter if you are in service, technology or retail the same business logics apply. People want to work for a company that represents something more than money. Customers want to associate with a brand that stands for something and finally you have to have a vision.

When we set out on our journey after the dot COM crash we had a plan and a vision but most of it was just faith, hard work and trouble, trial and error. The Christmas of 2001, after the terrorist attacks in USA, I had to take out the last mortgage on our house to meet the Christmas payroll. I remember sitting in my kitchen saying to my wife: “This is it. Now it has to work.” January 2002 everything changed and orders kept coming in like never before. We were a fairly small company then in the wonderful kingdom of Sweden, but we had bigger ambitions.

I think it is fair to say that we love what we do. We are still a private company, although this is not holy to us. Over the years we’ve felt that being a private company has helped us to survive and get stronger. We can focus on the long-term objectives in a way which would be hard if we were listed or owned by a private equity company that demands short-term profits.

We think that the travel industry is a great place to be. People love and need to travel. We know that people do have the option to buy direct from our suppliers or from one of our competitors and we are therefore very happy for every customer that transacts with us. Our whole management team is dedicated in serving customer and suppliers and this is one thing that makes us different.

I know that Internet is a faceless business. Customer loyalty is difficult to nurture and our suppliers can let us down, but WE cannot afford to be like that. This is one of the reasons that you will find faces of real people on our websites. There is a premium price to pay when you buy through an intermediary like Travelstart, even though we consider ourselves a low cost operator. That premium is to cover our costs and give some profit.

We are continually working on making things easier, but we are never satisfied. My hope is that you will like our services, products and websites. If you do please tell people you know, if you don’t please tell us.