Hotel discounts overshadowed by financial instability - UX Designer Sembo Employee Review

Friendly colleagues and nice offices. Pretty good benefits.

Many competent people got fired very easily. Not a durable business model with huge financial losses and management with lack of business acumen.

- Most people are nice and kind (except the CTO, who is a besserwisser and he believes he is a Zlatan in travel-tech. Moreover, he believes that he is infallible. Actually, such a person is easier to deceive, because such a type of person does not reflect and think critically) - The dogs in the office. When you meet a human, you prefer the dog.

- If it weren't for the owner, Stena Line, Sembo would have gone bankrupt a long time ago. - No benchmarking against competitors. Why? Then we would have seen how bad things are. - Luckily, the owners Stena Line don't understand how bad the competitive situation is, but neither does Sembo's management. Stena Line is used to ferries, real estate, and recycling (solid businesses). Sembo, on the other hand, is not something you can put your finger on. So it's easier to hide shortcomings. But Sembo's management doesn't know about the shortcomings because it's incompetent. They think they are excellent and infallible. They don't question themselves. Stena Line throws good money after bad. It would have been better if Stena Line had closed Sembo and used the money for something more sensible. For example, a new bow visor for a ferry or a new propeller for a ferry. - Sembo: Trying to win the next war with the weapons of the last war is a classic mistake. - Yes! It's easy to spend other people's (Stena Line) money. Quote from the out-of-touch CEO of Sembo: "As one of the leading Northern European travel groups, we’re just getting started! The Stena Line Travel Group leadership team came together to align on bold growth strategies and chart the course for an exciting future — united by our shared ambition and powered by the strength of Stena Line". - Sembo competes 85-95% against Booking and Expedia. Hand on heart, Sembo has no chance against Booking and Expedia. Sembo lacks pictures of the different room types, Bookings has a good loyalty program. Bookings has 600,000 direct contracts with hotels (Sembo has 4,000), Bookings has good AI. Why? Because the customer must be logged in to use the loyalty program (which makes personalizing possible), Booking has reviews. How does Booking get relevant reviews? Via the app on the smartphone during the hotel stay. How was check-in? How was the cleaning? How was your overall experience? Then you can get "free" taxis to and from the hotel at certain destinations if you book over a certain amount (not a particularly high amount). Does Sembo have any of this? No. Does Stena Line or even Sembo know about it? No. Do they know how much this will cost and how long this will take? Booking has been working on this for 25 years. Then money isn't everything. It's about the right organization, processes, tech, and personnel. - Sembo has too many business areas, so nothing is going well. The different operations are cannibalizing each other. - Stena Line may be rich, but poor as church rats when compared to Expedia and Booking. And Sembo competes 85-95% against these companies. Sembo has no chance, there isn't even a microscopic chance. - Booking sponsors WNBA and NBA. They also sponsored the World Cup in soccer last year. Also, Major League Baseball, etc. Expedia is the only OTA competitor that could afford such marketing. Sembo can't afford this. - Sembo has expensive administration, much manual work. - 50% of the developers in Spain can only speak tourist English, so communication suffers, which damages SEMBO's already bad situation. So it goes from bad to worse. So Sembo thinks the solution is to hire an English teacher. Keep on dreaming. If you haven't learned English before you're 20, it's hard (almost impossible) to learn a new language unless you live in the country where the language is spoken. - Sembo loves being in the media (although its size doesn't justify it) and making presentations to other businesses within the Stena Line group. How fantastic Sembo is. These other businesses within the Stena Line group are unknowingly basically fooled.