People change.
Markets follow.
What's next?

In 2016, Travelgram was launched — a startup conceived by Manuel Gruni to turn Instagram and its creators into real-life "living catalogues" for travel destinations. The project brought travel creators directly into destinations and resorts, allowing them to share not just the place itself, but the entire travel experience in real time: from the flight and arrival to food, excursions and everyday life at the resort.

In 2017, Travelgram was invited to the Italian Senate during the 38th World Tourism Day and Green Pride, contributing to the conversation around digital innovation and influencer marketing as tools for promoting more sustainable tourism. Travelgram would later evolve into Popular Travelers.

Even before that, there was Animatour – Specialisti in Vacanze, built around an equally simple intuition: transforming holiday entertainers — and the wealth of relationships they had built over the years with thousands of travellers — into a new kind of travel consultant. We called them the "flip-flop travel consultant" — someone capable of using personal experience, relationships and social media to recommend and sell destinations to their followers and contacts.

Along the same journey came Fotomonelle, a project that brought a female approach to professional photography into holiday resorts and travel destinations.

Distance, privacy, freedom and a space of their own. We couldn't change the traveller. We had to change the product.

Our focus quickly shifted towards villas, apartments, boats and new forms of independent hospitality. In 2021, Villas Planner was launched — a project dedicated to distributing private villas through the travel agency network. The concept was captured in a phrase that, after months of social distancing, had a very specific meaning: "Abbracci in Vacanza" — Hugs on Holiday.

The project started with around 2,000 villas across Italy, followed by an initial international portfolio focused primarily on Spain — particularly the Balearic and Canary Islands — and Greece. The private home was no longer simply an alternative to a hotel. It was becoming a fully-fledged, organised and distributable travel product.

A model born in the era of organised tourism and all-inclusive holidays was gradually reimagined in the opposite direction: independent apartments, greater freedom for guests, with hotel-style services available whenever needed.

No longer necessarily a room inside a hotel. A home within a world of services.

This evolution became an important part of the vision that guides Welldone today: taking what traditional hospitality does best and bringing it into new forms of accommodation.

We took the guaranteed allotment — a historic model of organised tourism — and applied it to privately owned properties. Villas, apartments, country houses and holiday residences are commercially acquired for agreed periods, with the owner receiving a guaranteed amount.

The owner knows the return in advance. The sales risk becomes ours.

It is a tour operator model brought into the world of alternative accommodation, with the aim of creating what we call a "distributed hotel": independent properties spread across different locations, but connected through services, commercial standards, guest assistance and distribution capabilities.

Homes, apartments and villas are not simply seen as properties to rent, but as places around which an entire travel experience can be built.

Because we believe the future of alternative accommodation is not simply about selling a night. It is about everything that can happen before, during and after that night.

That is how Sailingood and Yacht Planner were born. Once again, the objective was simple: to make a product accessible to the wider leisure market that, until then, had largely remained the preserve of sailors and boating enthusiasts.

Skippered yacht charters removed one of the main barriers to entry: enjoying a sailing holiday no longer required being a sailor, having boating experience or knowing how to handle a yacht.