Interview with Riccardo Sedola, CEO of Cyclando
February 8, 2022
Interview with Riccardo Sedola, CEO of Cyclando, a digital solution for cycling enthusiasts.
The bicycle: a sort of “plaything” in our earlier years, but a true passion in our adulthood. Cyclando is dedicated to those people who never gave up living life on two wheels.
What is Cyclando?
Cyclando is an online tour operating platform where the best tour operators in the sector offer exclusively bicycle tours. Our mission is to provide cycling enthusiasts with trips tailored to them where our beloved means of transportation takes the spotlight. The platform connects “bicycle-travelers” and specialized tour operators from all over Europe.
The tours are designed for all levels and can be filtered based on the preferred vehicle: MTB, e-Bike, racing bike, city-bike, etc. Not by chance, Cyclando’s motto is “CLICK AND RIDE”: find a bike tour you like, purchase it, and start cycling right away!
How does Cyclando work?
Cyclando’s platform is extremely easy to use and intuitive. Just choose the location, the time, the bike, the number of participants, and that’s it. Cyclando will find the best tours to experience on two wheels just for you!
There are two types of tours:
- Self-guided tours: tours that include overnight stay, luggage transport, bike renting and GPS tracking
- Guided tours: group tours with expert and qualified guides
Tours are available all around Europe, and the options are countless!
Let’s find out more about Cyclando with CEO Riccardo Sedola in the interview below!
Hi Riccardo, nice to meet you, and thank you for your time. How and when did the idea of Cyclando come about?
It happened on-field, at a time when I was chaperoning for tourists around Europe via bike, along with specialized tour operators. Customers would tell me how overly complicated finding, planning and purchasing a bicycle tour was. Then, back to my office, I’d see the huge amount of phone calls and emails it took for a single customer to book a bike tour. Thus, the idea came to me: making it easier and faster to purchase a bike tour.
How long did it take for the project to take form?
1 year to come up with a business model, 2 years for market validation and platform development. Nowadays, with over 800 bike tour offers, we’re the biggest tour operator service in Europe.
Who is Cyclando’s target audience? And how’s the market responding so far?
We essentially cater to everyone. Right now, we’re focused on customers who search for a planned vacation and specialized tour operators, meaning mainly couples and families. The market’s responding well, it appreciates the idea, the range of the offer and the speed of purchase.
Sports have become extremely important over the last two years. According to you, is there more interest in cycling and sports in general during the pandemic? If so, why?
Interest in cycling has grown a lot, be it for daily mobility, or as a sport. Though as a form of travel it’s still severely underdeveloped. We’re already offering specialized tour operators, but there are perfectly rideable, beautiful areas where tour operators are requested, but for which the supply is lacking. Moreover, the fear of traveling by train, plane or even only staying in a hotel influenced bike traveling. Sure, you can move around by bicycle, but, still, people like to go pretty far to spend their bike vacation. Anyway, we’re very optimistic, because from all the analysis and trends we can tell this form of tourism will have a major rebound post-pandemic.
How did you launch the project? Was crowdfunding involved?
No, or at least not yet. We don’t rule it out for the future, but up until now we’ve used our own resources. We’re currently fundraising, since we’d like to make our platform more performing and scalable.
Fun fact: do you use Cyclando yourselves when planning your holidays?
Let’s say that we go on the tours that will “appear” on Cyclando for our holidays. We constantly receive travel proposals from tour operators all over Europe asking us to come along for bike rides to discover new areas. We basically like to test out the “previews” for Cyclando.
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