Imagine a vacation where you didn’t have to plan a thing beforehand. You simply get your info packet, pack your bags, and jet away towards your new adventure. No stressful ticket searching, hotel booking, or itinerary organizing; just you, your loved ones, and plenty of fun. However, there’s a catch – your destination is a surprise until just before it’s time to go.
This is the dream scenario that Lillian Rafson wanted to create with her company, Pack Up + Go. She wanted travelers to experience the joy and excitement of spontaneity during a trip and truly focus on living in the moment. And coming from a small business-centered family, she wanted her concept to also allow new audiences to find and support local businesses in vacation-worthy areas. When Lillian came up with the idea at only 23 years old, she had no idea that in less than a year it would explode into an online phenomenon, trending on social media and exceeding her ‘annual trips booked’ expectations tenfold.
8 years later, having weathered the travel limitations that covid brought about in 2019 and flourished, Lillian aims to make Pack Up + Go the best U.S. travel service, and by the looks of it, is well on the way to doing so.
Allow me to introduce Lillian Rafson…
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Hi there! My name is Lillian Rafson, and I’m the Founder + CEO of Pack Up + Go. We plan curated getaways around the United States. The catch? Your destination is a surprise until the day you depart! Since launching in 2016, we have sent over 40,000 travelers to over 300 destinations around the country.
In 2015, I was twenty-three years old when I quit my job at a startup in New York and embarked on a solo trip to give myself the space to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I know it sounds cliché, but that was my goal. My favorite thing about this solo trip was how spontaneous it all was – I found myself visiting places I knew nothing about and falling in love with them. I was totally open to new ideas, new foods, new experiences, and taking it all in. It dawned on me that this was so different from how I normally traveled with a destination in mind, things I wanted to do, places I wanted to eat. In one of my hostels, I met two women who were visiting Riga, Latvia on a surprise vacation with a European travel company. Instantly, I knew that this was what I wanted to do with my life.
It dawned on me that this type of spontaneous travel, this sense of adventure I was experiencing was possible to provide to others. It also dawned on me that I had traveled to the far corners of Eastern Europe, but had only been to a handful of States in the U.S. My undergraduate degree was in Consumer Culture, and I’ve always had a passion for supporting small businesses, so my mind immediately went to how many small businesses in lesser-visited U.S. destinations could benefit from increased tourism. From the computer in the lobby of my hostel, I emailed my parents to tell them I was moving back home to Pittsburgh, PA and starting a Surprise Travel Agency.
It’s worth mentioning that I come from a family of small business owners. Both of my parents, both of my siblings, and all four of my grandparents started their own companies. I never grew up dreaming of running my own business, but I did see it modeled successfully from a very early age. I feel really fortunate to have had this perspective, because when I was twenty-three years old and inspiration struck, I dove in to entrepreneurship headfirst and had nothing but support.
A few weeks after I sent that email to my parents, I moved back into my childhood bedroom, bought a website domain, and Googled, “How to become a travel agent.” The rest is history!
Prior to launching the company to the public, I planned three practice Surprise Vacations. I planned one trip for my family, one for my best friend, and one for a local brewery owner who I met because I was working at a bar at nights while launching the business. In all three of these scenarios, I knew the travelers personally, so it was a really fun process to curate their experiences. All of these trips went off without a hitch, which bolstered my confidence that the business could succeed.
With these three case studies under my belt, I participated in a local pitch competition. It was my first time pitching the business to strangers, and I won first place! This pitch competition had a very modest cash prize, and also led to an interview on a local radio station. I shared that interview on social media, where a friend’s friend who was a reporter for Business Insider saw it. She published an article on Pack Up + Go, which went viral. Within a day, I had received a dozen bookings, had gotten calls from Shark Tank and NBC Nightly News, and was in complete shock. Remember, the business was still just me – and I had no idea what I was doing!
The truth is, ignorance was bliss! I did not have a contingency plan in place for when travelers missed their flights, or a traveler got sick in their destination, or wanted to extend their trip. I was singlehandedly providing our 24/7 in-house traveler support, and I learned so much along the way. In my original business plan, I projected planning fifty trips in 2016. By the end of the year, we had over 500 departures. It was an absolute whirlwind experience!
When I was first launching Pack Up + Go, so many people told me I needed to build an app. The business is bootstrapped, and I had no savings, so an app wasn’t anywhere within the realm of possibility. Instead, I decided to go low-tech. I went to Staples, got some large white envelopes, and printed out a piece of paper that revealed the travelers’ destination. I imagined this was simply a placeholder solution until I could afford to build an app that would have a high-tech way of displaying the trip’s destination. When our first travelers returned home, they emailed me pictures of them holding up that piece of paper that said, “You’re Going to Washington, DC!” with a big smile, and I shared it on social media. That low-cost placeholder continues to be one of our primary methods of attracting travelers eight years later. Travelers love to take videos of them ripping open their envelope, revealing their destination, and sharing it on social media. It brings me so much joy to experience the thrill of the surprise alongside our travelers!
Beyond user generated content, we love to partner with other brands to spread the word about Surprise Travel. We’ve had partnerships with small independent brands, as well as national brands like Ford to promote Surprise Road Trips. We find that co-branded partnerships are a great opportunity to promote both companies and to reach a wider audience than we could on our own.
I love The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. It was incredibly influential as I was launching Pack Up + Go, and I continue to recommend it to all new founders! So many founders feel pressure to have a perfectly formed business when they launch, and this book reminds you to start small with your minimum viable product, and grow from there. We embody a “test + learn” mindset at Pack Up + Go, and building a business is always about adjusting as you go!
When I need inspiration, I love listening to How I Built This with Guy Raz or Founders by David Senra. It can feel really lonely starting a business, and hearing about other founders who have gone through the process always reassures me and inspires me to keep going.
Since 2020, it has been a rollercoaster in the travel industry! Leisure travel is especially susceptible to changing market conditions, and my focus today is to build a brand that is strong enough to withstand these changes. It hasn’t always been easy, but I am really proud of how far we have come and how diversified our revenue streams are today compared to 2019.
Our goal is to become the best U.S. travel service, and we inch closer to that goal every day. For us, this means excelling at the services we currently offer and developing ways to enhance our travelers’ experience while streamlining our operations and creating as much efficiency as possible. I believe in organic growth and prioritizing sustainable business practices before growth at all costs. We have so many different growth opportunities available to us as a leisure travel brand, and I’m excited to continue to grow and innovate in the years to come!
Don’t let your planning become procrastination! Business will always be full of surprises, so keep an open mind, roll with the punches, and enjoy the ride.
packupgo.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lillian-rafson/
Instagram: packupgo_travel
TikTok: packupgo_travel
Facebook: packupgo
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