You know us; we toe the line of optimism and realism every day. In the integrated marketing industry, and just as people who operate in the world from a brand strategy perspective, we’ve gotten pretty good at keeping things real, unfiltered, yet still looking on the bright side of a dark year.
And guess what? We’re not out of steam yet. That’s why this is part (whatever, 19? 252? 1001?) of our startup stalking series. Because in a year of really depressing things, there’s really no reason not to find some joy in a vacation startup called Beachy.
Yeah– even in 2020, and even with projections for 2021, this startup at the intersection of travel, hospitality, SaaS, and apparently crisis management founded in 2016 has survived the year of closing borders with $8.3M in funding.
We can't have it yet, but literally everyone in the world needs a holiday right now
It seems originally, this startup was meant to be a standalone SaaS to be adopted by resorts, restaurants with private beaches, hotels with pools, etc., handling everything from reservations to POS. Great, right? A customer-facing end for guests to reserve a pool chair and food and beverage service for 1 hour after their arrival from the airport? A way to make sure your family and kids will have enough room on the beach and with chairs together? And on the B2B end– streamlining efficiency, productivity, and service for the vacation hosts? A strong model if we ever saw one. But then 2020 hit– travel ceased, vacations were canceled and postponed, and tourism/hospitality took a hit as hard as the live event industry.
In a true adapt-or-die fashion that we think deserves to be celebrated, Beachy now knows what it’s perfect for– integrating with legacy softwares of their clients, who desperately need to find ways to reopen, to safely and securely handle reservations that will keep people safe. That is– a POS system that’s as contactless as their B2B client wants, food and beverage service that’s there on the beach just before guests arrive to minimize contact, and keeping parties socially distant with that same mapping and reservation software.
In ruins, the strongest foundations still stand
In a way, this attempt at realistic optimism ended up a little depressing anyways– talking about families trying to travel and have new experiences when the airport, the staff of their destination, and more might still be struggling to adapt and stay safe while doing it. But in this jumble of emotions is also a lot of hope– hope that humans have the ability to adapt and make the best of crappy situations, change long-used ways of doing things in order to keep with the (very weird, pre-apocalyptic) times.
And that– that resilient, brainstorm-fed drive is the same one we’ve always loved to see in the industries we help market. The people that see the way through unpredictable times is through strong brand building, product naming, and growth hacking in the face of so many challenges. Adaptability and the strongest branding foundations are what keep you standing in the rubble after a year like this one; maybe this year is when everyone finally realized how seriously we mean that.
In a world where startup post-mortems are published every day, the world where we spent Thanksgiving on Zoom, and the world that’s stressed beyond belief, we don’t think it’s a bad thing at all to dream about Beachy getaways and drinks by the pool.