We’re happy to welcome the Turist Agent team from Serbia to the Danube Digital Accelerator! Thank you for taking the time to talk with us about what you’re building. To start off — could you introduce Tourist Agent and tell us how your software is helping transform the work of small and medium travel agencies?
Turist Agent is a simple, affordable, and complete back-office software designed specifically for small and medium travel agencies, helping them digitalize and automate everything they once managed with papers and spreadsheets. Coming from the tourism industry ourselves, we built a system that handles contracts, invoices, vouchers, passenger lists, fiscalization, and e-tourist reporting in just a few clicks — reducing errors, saving hours of administrative work, and allowing agencies to focus on what actually matters: selling trips and serving travelers.

Many smaller travel agencies still rely on manual processes for bookings and customer management. What specific challenges did you notice in the industry that inspired you to build Turist Agent?
Armin Gicić: Five years ago, when I started working in our family-owned travel agency, I immediately saw how much time was being lost on manual administration — papers everywhere, Excel files for everything, repeated data entry, and constant stress around contracts, invoices, fiscal reports, and e-tourist obligations. I’ve always loved travel and tourism, but I’ve always hated paperwork, and that contrast made the problem impossible to ignore. Together with Haris (Zenović), who is now our CTO and co-founder, we began building a simple internal tool just to help our own agency survive the workload. That early version caught attention, and we soon received support from the Swiss government to develop a full prototype. What started as a solution for our own daily frustrations has now grown into a complete software platform that is entering commercialization and helping agencies across the region eliminate manual processes and finally work the way a modern travel agency should.

How does your solution make life easier for travel agents on a daily basis?
Turist Agent makes everyday work dramatically easier by replacing dozens of manual tasks with fast, automated processes: instead of juggling papers, Word templates, and spreadsheets, agents can create contracts, invoices, vouchers, passenger lists, fiscal receipts, and e-tourist reports in just a few clicks. All client and booking data is stored in one place, so there’s no retyping, no searching through folders, and far fewer mistakes. The system sends automatic updates, keeps documents organized, and cuts administrative time from hours to minutes — allowing agents to focus on selling, communicating with clients, and delivering better travel experiences instead of dealing with paperwork.

You mentioned upcoming AI features for pricing and analytics – can you share a bit about what’s planned there?
Absolutely. We’re now building an AI layer that will sit on top of the existing Turist Agent workflow and help agencies make smarter, faster decisions. One part of this is AI-assisted pricing, where the system analyzes previous sales, seasonality, demand, and supplier conditions to recommend optimal prices or detect when an offer is underpriced or overpriced. The second part is AI analytics, which will automatically read all agency data — bookings, destinations, customer behavior, revenue trends — and turn it into clear insights and forecasts. Instead of waiting for monthly reports or manually calculating anything, agencies will get real-time suggestions on what to sell, to whom, and when, helping them increase profit and reduce operational guesswork.
‍

Tell us more about your team – how did you come together, what connects you, and how did the idea for Turist Agent first come to life?
Armin Gicić: Our team came together very naturally because we all come from the same world — tourism, technology, and a shared desire to fix a problem we were all seeing. The idea for Turist Agent was born when I joined our family travel agency five years ago and realized how much time was being wasted on paperwork, administration, and repetitive tasks. I loved the tourism side of the job, but the manual processes were overwhelming, so I teamed up with Haris, who is now our CTO. He built the first internal tool to help us manage documents and bookings more efficiently. That small tool quickly grew into something bigger, and when we received support from the Swiss government to build a full prototype, we realized we had a real product. From there, we brought in people who shared the same mission — developers, designers, and tourism professionals who understand the industry’s pain points. What connects us is that we’ve all lived this problem firsthand, and we’re building Turist Agent from real agency experience, not from theory.

When you joined the Danube Digital  Accelerator, what were your expectations? Have any of the workshops or mentoring sessions already influenced your product, business model, or growth strategy?
When we joined the Danube Digital Accelerator, our expectation was simple: to get clearer, more structured guidance on how to scale beyond our local market. We came in hoping to challenge our assumptions about pricing, positioning, and market entry — and that’s exactly what started happening. Several workshops and mentoring sessions have already influenced our approach: we refined our value proposition for international agencies, adjusted parts of our business model to make onboarding faster, and got clearer on which markets to prioritize first. The mentors pushed us to think bigger but also to be more focused, and that combination is already helping us shape a stronger growth strategy for the next stage of Turist Agent.

What’s next for Turist Agent? Where do you see your company heading after the accelerator –  and what milestones are you most excited to reach in the coming months?
What’s next for Turist Agent is a very exciting phase of real growth and product expansion. After the accelerator, our main focus is internationalization — taking what we’ve already validated in Serbia and the region and bringing it to the wider EU market. Over the next few months, we’re preparing a stronger go-to-market strategy, launching our new AI-powered modules, and continuing to improve the onboarding experience so agencies can start using the system within minutes instead of days. We’re also beginning pilot collaborations with DMCs and transport companies, which will open entirely new segments for us. The milestones we’re most excited about are expanding to our first two EU markets, reaching 100+ active agencies, and launching our AI features for pricing and smart analytics. It feels like we’re entering the stage where Turist Agent stops being just a local solution and starts becoming a regional — and soon international — standard for small and medium travel agencies.
‍

Thank you to the Turist Agent team for sharing their story and for being part of the Danube Digital Accelerator. It’s inspiring to see how they are helping small and medium travel agencies step into a more digital, data-driven future. We’re proud to support their journey and will be cheering them on as they expand across Europe and build Turist Agent into a new standard for travel agencies everywhere.

‍