Domain expertise and experience count for a lot, says seasoned Irish entrepreneur Mike McGearty

Right after Mike McGearty, CEO and co-founder, Meili Travel Technology, left Cape Town where he was speaking at WiT Africa came the news that his company had signed a partnership with FREENOW, Europe’s leading Mobility Super App.

And as soon as that was announced, I got a marketing emailer from FREENOW, telling me that “Car Rental is here! We’ve got great news that car rental has come to FREENOW! With 3 big brands: Avis, Europcar and Hertz.”

As though we needed more evidence that McGearty and his SWAT-like team of 38 at Meili means business this time round in their mission to reinvent car rental – to make renting a car as easy as ride hailing for travellers, and to reduce friction between suppliers and customers, without having to go through brokers and middlemen.

McGearty mentioned the word “friction” many times in his interview with me on stage, as many times as he mentioned “loyalty” and “partnerships”. In short, he believes reducing friction in the car rental booking process will allow partners using Meili’s technology to drive direct bookings and build loyalty with their customers.

“Loyalty is entering a new age,” he said, just as Meili is ushering in a new age of car rental.

Mike McGearty on stage at WiT Africa. What makes him laugh? His kids, he says.

There’s something unabashedly direct about this Irish entrepreneur – he knows what Meili wants to do and how to do it – and his 12-year experience with CarTrawler has certainly helped hone his and co-founder Bobby Healy’s vision, and execution.

While Healy was writing computer games as a teenager, McGearty was learning accountancy. He worked at a few technology companies early on his career and decided to go backpacking for a year. It was that year of roaming the planet that opened his eyes to travel.

Timing is everything – Meili is a different way of adding value

Returning to Ireland after the break, he was “drawn to CarTrawler in 2006 through the chairman at the time who I had worked with before my travels. At that time, the aviation industry was actively seeking ways to boost ancillary revenues, the car rental sector lacked the consolidation seen today, and consumers were transitioning to online platforms. These factors made CarTrawler an ideal fit for the evolving landscape of the industry.”

Joining first as chief operating officer then becoming CEO five years later, he and his team took “what was a very small start-up business to one generating over €200 million in net revenues a year, and one that grew from ten people to over 500”.

He believes timing is everything and it was right for CarTrawler then. “Airlines were looking for ancillary revenue and the market was highly fragmented, so the best way we could add and create value was through an aggregated broker solution.”

Since then, the market has moved on and the timing is now right for Meili. “Now the industry is much more consolidated it’s a different way of adding value. We had to ask ourselves – how much value can a broker be adding in today’s landscape. This has really prompted the need for a transformative approach. These legacy models created barriers between car rental brands and customers, resulting in significant friction. We want to change the industry norms and disrupt distribution again, this time in favour of the car rental companies and bringing customers directly back to them.

“Our technology facilitates seamless integration between car rental companies, airlines, travel and technology partners and their mutual customers. We ensure a friction-free customer experience where customers consume car rental in the way it was meant – directly from the car rental provider with increased customer satisfaction and deepened loyalty.

“That’s why timing is right, lots has changed in 15 years. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of distribution channels out there where a broker is still a requirement, we’re just focusing ourselves on the customer and how we can support the move from legacy tech to direct experience within airlines, travel and technology brands.

“The Meili platform is designed to return control to car rental brands, offering a technology-driven solution for a seamless and customer-centric experience.”

Experience, knowledge, network – easier to hit the ground running

In many ways, it’s an opportunity to fix what they had built at CarTrawler, and I asked if they were doing it out of a guilty conscience.

McGearty shrugged aside the notion, and reiterated, “This time around, our focus at Meili is on setting a new standard in the industry and truly focusing putting the customer first, addressing past shortcomings in the broker world.

“For example, a big part of the broker model margin is excess insurance, however, this product is one of the main drivers of confusion, mistrust and friction between the customer and the car rental brands. That’s why we don’t get involved with insurance product, pricing or customer servicing – we leave all that up to our car rental partners because that’s their sweet spot, while we focus on our strength – world leading technology solutions.”

It’s raised £15m in funding and since launching just a year ago, it has signed with 15 partners – including Travelstart in Africa. “We have a global reach with partnerships in almost every continent in the world, and we’re very confident in our vision and what we have set out to do. With a purely tech model, we don’t need a huge team to run our platform. Using leading edge cloud-based technology means our team stays lean and we build a high margin, capital efficient business.”

Asked if it’s harder to start a business when one is much older, McGearty again shrugged aside the suggestion, saying, “We definitely still have a lot of energy, and to go with it we have huge added experience this time round. We have a lot of knowledge and a large network base which made it easier to hit the ground running from the offset. We’re all at different life stages, so while we’re hugely dedicated to success of Meili, our experience enables us to also focus on things like family time and supporting work life balance.

“Nonetheless, like any start-up or new business model, challenges are inevitable, but we’re ready to take them on.”

In fact, he said, one of its investors, Schooner Capital, has among its requirements, founders who are older and have started and ran businesses before. “Experience is not to be under-estimated, neither should domain expertise.”

Domain expertise over AI – “you need to understand your industry”

Another factor that could be in Meili’s favour is that its team comprises familiar faces from CarTrawler. Asked how he approaches building out the team, he said, “Yes, we have a first-class team with vast experience in the travel tech industry. Collectively, we have established thousands of online travel and loyalty partnerships and developed strong commercial relationships with over 150 of the world’s leading commercial airlines.

“We hired experts from across the industry, not just our old business so we have people from previous competitors and some great recommendations from other travel tech companies to give us fresh insights too, we’ve a great blend.

“The start-up world attracts a particular type of person, we’re all ready to roll up our sleeves and get stuck in. We have been lucky enough that a lot of the people we worked with in the past were eager to reunite and embark on the journey of building something exceptional once again.”

Asked if the current tech environment would allow Meili to scale without needing so many humans and how he sees AI changing jobs, he said, “Hands up, I’m not the technical one when it comes to Meili, I leave that to Bobby but, I will say that although there are plenty of opportunities to scale through the integration of automation, artificial intelligence, machine learning and advanced technologies, however, I really believe domain expertise counts for everything. If you don’t have experience, you can’t make it more efficient. You need to understand your industry – it’s why we’ve hired such an experienced team; it enables us to be more efficient across the board.

“AI can play a transformative role in companies across all functions, enhancing efficiency, innovation, and competitiveness. We really try to use it to automate routine and time-consuming tasks, freeing up our people for the more interesting, strategic and creative endeavours.

“In terms of product development, AI can assist in ideation, design, and development processes, accelerating innovation in product development. There is a lot of opportunity in this space.”

McGearty also sees opportunities in other verticals beyond car rental. He has said that “the ultimate goal is to build a high performing technology platform that everybody wants to use. We’re starting out initially with car rental, but this is immensely scalable across different verticals.”

He added, “We’re having very interesting conversations with our partners around the world and we’re learning all the time how we can support their continued growth, and remove the headache that technology brings to a lot of large travel companies across the industry. From car rental wider mobility is an obvious move, but we’re not limiting ourselves to just the mobility space, the opportunities are endless and with our nimble team we can pivot to drive growth for not only ourselves, but our partners too.”

Pressed on a vertical at WiT Africa, he said, “Accommodation.”