Marlene Merle was born in the German city of Marburg and, with studies in computer science, she dedicated the first years of her professional career to the corporate sector. After having lived parts of her youth in La Palma and Tenerife, she arrived in Lanzarote ten years ago to join the agricultural company run by her father.
In 2019, she took the reins of the family business, but her passion for sports made her realize the absence of a digital platform that would bring together the offer of outdoor activities in Lanzarote.
At the beginning of 2025, she decided to make a change in her career path and dedicate herself one hundred percent to the birth of Benty, the first technological intermediation platform for active tourism on the island.
The project has won both the Impulsa Startup award from the Chamber of Commerce of Lanzarote and La Graciosa, as well as the Innovation Award granted by Charter 100 Canarias and the Government of the Canary Islands.
"We exclude activities that are not compliant with the protection of the territory"
Benty connects travelers with twelve local providers selected for their excellence, and is financed through a commission on the final retail price.
“We exclude activities that are not compliant with the protection of the territory. It is something very important for the brand,” Merle emphasizes. Thus, Benty does not include activities with motor vehicles such as buggies or cars, focusing its proposal on sports that depend on individual physical effort and endurance.
“I threw away a website worth 15,000 euros”
The technological development of the platform went through a definitive turning point in May of this year. The first version of the website, commissioned in 2024 from an external agency while Merle was still running the agricultural company, represented an investment of 15,000 euros that barely generated traction in its first months.
Everything changed when she participated as a judge in the entrepreneurship competition El Talentón. There, a group of 18 and 19-year-old young people presented a fully functional web portal developed in just two hours using artificial intelligence tools.
“That same day I went home, it was Saturday, and I said: I'm going to make the new website. On Sunday, I sat down with an AI application called Lovable, threw away the initial 15,000 euro page and launched the new website,” she recalls.
That decision completely transformed the scope of the business. By being optimized for Artificial Intelligence search engines, the platform began to receive users who plan their vacations by asking ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Claude.
“It has been an absolute game changer; tourists searching through those engines find me because the platform is designed for them,” she emphasizes.
The Chamber of Commerce, combined sports, and the leap beyond Lanzarote
In her business consolidation, Marlen particularly highlights the role of the Lanzarote Chamber of Commerce through the Impulsa Startup program. “It was much more than an award. When I started, I had little knowledge of how to structure a business, and in the program, I learned everything from the ground up; the mentors helped me redefine the path and successfully enter the market,” she shares.
The average profile of Benty users is a tourist around 35 years old, with an above-average purchasing power, mainly from the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, France, and the Nordic countries.
Far from marketing individual classes, the platform focuses on combined multi-day experiences: “We sell premium experiences; the average ticket per person is 300 euros because customers book customized packages combining, for example, tennis and golf or several water disciplines depending on the season,” she details.
Although Marlen personally attends to clients in three languages, she is currently working on integrating AI conversational agents to automate frequent queries and gain efficiency.
"We have to adapt to the new era of digital searches with AI"
Benty's vision is not limited to Lanzarote. The tech entrepreneur's roadmap includes an initial expansion to capital islands like Tenerife and Gran Canaria, with the long-term goal of positioning the brand in the main active tourism destinations on the European continent.
In parallel, the experience gained in generative positioning and artificial intelligence has opened a second professional path: consulting and specialized training.
Marlen gives classes and lectures aimed at teaching tourism companies how to position themselves in the new AI engines, with engagements at international business schools like Les Roches Marbella and planned collaborations with the Lanzarote Promotion Society (SPEL).
“The idea is to share what has been learned and train the sports tourism sector on how to adapt to the new era of digital searches,” he concludes.
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