Was macht eigentlich das Travel Start-up ZAUBAR?

Can you describe your startup in one sentence?

ZAUBAR is an AI-powered augmented reality creator platform for passionate locals and hospitality businesses such as hotels, amusement parks, museums, tour guides, and other tourist attractions.

In your opinion, what sets ZAUBAR apart and makes you stand out from the competition?

Two things: We’ve developed the world’s first AI tool for creating content for AR experiences. Second, unlike most augmented reality companies, we focus on social, location-based experiences—meaning our developers curate AR experiences that reveal the history of a specific place. That’s why we see ourselves as a travel startup just as much as a tech startup.

Bei welcher Gelegenheit kam die Unternehmensidee?

We are passionate travelers ourselves. We are particularly interested in local culture, authenticity, history, and the things that remain hidden from the naked eye. We also have experience in media production and augmented reality technologies. That is why we founded ZAUBAR, a location-based augmented reality platform that is ideal for creating engaging tourist experiences.

What was the best advice you received when starting your business?

The startup ecosystem is evolving rapidly. This is especially true in the travel and technology sectors. The best advice we received was to stay open-minded and constantly adapt to change. We have demonstrated our adaptability by integrating artificial intelligence, gamification, and NFTs (as digital souvenirs) into our technology suite.

What has been your greatest achievement so far, and what has been your biggest challenge?

Our greatest achievement is the number and scope of our clients, which include some of the most prestigious companies. We have collaborated with the Hotel Adlon Kempinski, local tour guides, museums, memorial sites, and media companies. They have all demonstrated compelling use cases for location-based AR. The biggest challenge for us was the level of acceptance of AR in 2019. Digital travel and virtual tourism were completely unknown concepts before the pandemic. Now, acceptance of AR is skyrocketing, the metaverse is a trending topic, and we have already positioned ourselves well for 2019.

What are your plans for the next few months?

Over the next few months, we will be busy following up on the contacts we made at the SXSW conference, which we attended in the U.S. We expect to sign contracts with several leading companies in the travel industry.

Let's say you receive a loan of 500,000 euros. What would you do with the money?

After four years of successfully developing custom software for the tourism industry, we look forward to making our platform more scalable and transforming it into a “do-it-yourself” platform where even smaller companies and tour guides can create augmented reality tours. To achieve this, we would invest our resources in our web CMS and complete it sooner.

Where do you see further potential for innovation in the tourism industry?

NFTs and AI… NFTs will be the next generation of travel souvenirs. Tourists don’t collect fridge magnets, fabric patches, and keychains because they’re interested in the objects themselves, but because they want to own a piece of the places they’ve visited. So the value doesn’t come from the physical aspect of the souvenir, but rather from the meaning attached to it. We also believe that AI has not yet been sufficiently explored in the tourism sector. That is why we are focusing our efforts on developing AI tools for the hospitality industry to attract more customers.

What advice would you give to other entrepreneurs?

You should be open to the various applications of these products. Of course, games and entertainment are the first things that come to mind when you think of augmented reality, but we’ve identified and tapped into a huge opportunity in the travel industry.