Dragons’ Den: Plotpackers secures investment from Deborah Meaden and Steven Bartlett

Plotpackers, which launched in September 2023 and now counts Deborah Meaden and Steven Bartlett among its investors, currently generates around 30% of its revenue through creators, but only about 5% through travel agents. 

However, founder Louise Truman, 26, tells TTG growing the trade side of the business is one of her top priorities. “It’s absolutely a goal to have travel agents as a proper revenue stream,” she says.

To this end, Plotpackers is offering independents 20% commission and developing a “social-first” platform designed around the way it believes the business of selling travel is changing.

The booking platform combines products, commission, payment tracking and CRM functionality with tools that allow agents to monitor social media activity, including clicks, conversions and audience interests.

It is bound up with an AI agent which processes this social data and suggests “which travel experiences they should be pushing to specific clients”. “It’s kind of an all-in-one system,” Truman says. “We’re building Plotpackers for what the industry is going to look like in five years time.”

‘Creator economy’ to change travel agent’s role

Louise believes the “creator economy” could fundamentally change the role of the travel agent, with content creators bringing their communities together to travel rather than simply promoting holidays to an audience.

Plotpackers sees creators as a major part of its business model, describing them as being “almost like TikTok travel agents”. The company provides the infrastructure for creators to organise trips for their communities and monetise those relationships.

“I want to build towards what the next generation of travel agents realistically looks like,” Louise says.

She believes the opportunity is strongest among younger travellers, who may find it difficult to build social connections outside work and existing friendship groups.

“How do I meet new people? How do I have these connections? How do I be spontaneous?” she says. “That’s what young people are asking, and I think this is where travel is absolutely mega.”

Independent agents ‘the least-served people in travel’

That approach is also driving Plotpackers’ pivot towards the trade, with Louise particularly interested in independent agents over large agency groups. “Independents are the least-served people in the industry,” she says. “There’s nothing that’s really built to serve them.”

Louise points to the growing number of independents using Instagram to find and engage with customers, and believes the overlap between creators and agents – both heavily female-dominated sectors, she adds – creates a significant opportunity.

She launched Plotpackers in response to what she saw as a lack of mechanisms for women to feel safer while travelling together, having been sexually assaulted while travelling in her early 20s.

The business, which began as a passion project, was a near instant success, with Louise achieving £1.5 million in revenue in her first year without external investment or support.

Plotpackers is now a full-fledged tour operator, with safety a key cornerstone of its proposition. However, Louise is careful not to claim group travel can eliminate risk entirely. “Plotpackers is not the answer to women’s safety,” she says. “But what we can provide is additional safeguarding and peace of mind.”

This is done through vetted suppliers, local coordinators and a large-group model, which has helped Plotpackers sell destinations customers might be reluctant to travel independently, such as Latin America.

Plotpackers’ growth has been supercharged by Louise’s appearance on BBC’s Dragons’ Den. Louise tells TTG she was headhunted by the programme while on a Plotpackers trip to Costa Rica.

“The BBC rang me, told me they’d seen me on Instagram, and asked if I’d thought about going on the show,” she says. “I hadn’t, but I knew it’d be a huge opportunity for brand awareness, even if I didn’t get any funding. So it was a very easy yes!”

It ended up being much more than a brand exercise, though, with the young founder walking away with investment from both Deborah Meaden and Steven Bartlett.

“It was hard to believe the deal was actually real and it wasn’t just TV,” she says. “I left filming and got a voice note from Steven that evening asking me to come into his office the following week. It was totally surreal.”

The longer-term ambition, now Louise has secured her investors, is to become “the go-to in group travel” – especially for women – and to put more of the “economic outcome” of travel selling back into individuals’ hands, whether they are creators or agents.

“I’ve seen creators who have worked with us have their lives changed from having access to the kind of income we can give them,” she says. “I really want that to happen at scale.”