TLabs Showcase on travel startups featuring US-based trip planning and destination service platform Triptrotting.
Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?
We are two best friends (Aigerim Duiseneyeva and Shana Zheng), avid travelers and entrepreneurs who believe that traveling is about out-of-the box experiences and friendships you can take home.
After working in the corporate world and in investment banking fields, we decided to pursue our passion and share our vision for travel experience with others through Triptrotting.
What financial support did you have to launch the business?
Triptrotting started with a small personal loan from our families who believed in us.  From there, the company received support through the University of Southern California’s Seed Investment Competition as a 2nd place winner in the graduate level.
Although the first version of our site was far from substantial, the power of the idea received an overwhelming demand around the world in the college community.
Triptrotting was most recently funded by Bill Gross’ Idealab to build a more robust platform and expand our footprint around the world.
What problem are you trying to solve?
Traveling is about the experience, and so often people find themselves on tour buses and taken advantage of as a clueless tourist.
For young travelers especially, trying to get a unique travel experience is even more difficult, let alone meeting people who are like-minded.
Triptrotting allows travelers and like-minded peers to meet one another and create meaningful relationship through cultural exchange and networking.
Describe the business, core products and services?
Triptrotting is a global community of travelers and local hosts, who are matched together based on similar interests. Through our online portal a traveler can locate a like-minded local host to show him/her the city from the eyes of a local and a host can expand his/her network without ever leaving the home city.
From a short meet up for bite to eat or tour of the city to overnight stays, Triptrotting will matches travelers and hosts with those who they are actually interested in meeting.
Travelers pay the host a tip based on the type of meet up. Â The payment is transferred to the host only post a satisfactory rating after the trip.
Hosts are able to either cash out the tip or convert the payment into a donation to one of our partner nonprofit organizations (including Wokai, B1G1, Flying Kites, Give Running to name a few). Â The website includes features such as member reviews, ratings, messaging and more.
The site is currently open to verified members who are associated with a universities and companies or know a current member.
You can also join by requesting to be verified by our staff. Â This will help keep up the quality of our members and help maintain the safety of our community.
Who are your key customers and users at launch?
Our key demographic currently is students, professionals, and people who are between 18 to 35 years old.
Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?
Before approaching investors, we shared our idea with various universities and received support working with many study abroad programs. The concept was widely accepted and encouraged us to grow into other locations and demographics world-wide.
What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?
Triptrotting matches travelers and hosts for successful meet ups and charges a small transaction fee based on the tip travelers pay to the hosts.
The model is successful when people make meaningful connections. Â We work with location representatives in various universities around the world and also use social media to spread the word.
SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?
Strengths:
- Diversity and quality of our customer base. Â Members are all verified representing universities, professional organizations and companies.
Weaknesses:
- Having to educate travelers that the option of meeting locals who can help enhance their trips more than just guided tours is available.
Opportunities:
- To become a disruptive service in an industry that focuses mostly on packaged tours and reservation products.
Threats:
- Competition.
Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?
From the time this idea was on a napkin, we received tremendous support from everyone. Â We have been extremely lucky and have worked hard to see the idea grow into where it is today.
What is your success metric 12 months from now?
Metrics for success include the scalability of our site and successful traveler/host meet ups.
Here is a clip:
Triptrotting – Not a clueless tourist from Triptrotting on Vimeo.
NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.
Related posts:
Isn’t this exactly the same as Tripping.com?
Actually Michael, it is not.
I can outline a few reasons and compare and contrast the sites for you in order to get a better understanding or you can just read the other article and compare the business models.
Tripping seems to have a revolving them around “making the world a better place through cultural exchange” where as Triptrotting focus on networking and connecting like minded young professionals in various parts of the world.
Although they may seem similar in style they are quite different in the approach and target audience. Tripping focuses on “hardcore travelers” while triptrotting targets “students, professionals, and people who are between 18 to 35 years old.”
That is just one example on how they differ. The section labeled “Describe the business, core products and services?” in both articles can give you a better picture about how the end goals for both sites are quite different.
http://www.tnooz.com/2010/08/13/tlabs/tlabs-showcase-tripping/
Mike, I am not very familiar with Tripping.com, but from what I see on their site it rather looks more like Couchsurfing but FOR profit. It is hard to tell if people are verified (or their info is verified) and how you are matched with people (do you simply read profiles and find those whom you like or will have common interests? Curious to see how much detail each profile has. (As a side note-I think it is an unfortunate company name choice, but that is more from a marketing standpoint.)
Triptrotting on the other hand verifies its members and every member is either a student from top university or young professional from major company or non-profit (e.g. Teach For America, McKinsey, World Bank, etc). Moreover, Triptrotting uses a matching algorithm to suggest you locals that you have things in common with, so for example I am a young professional who works at a University, so locals I am matched with are young professionals who are in the education field. Not only do I get to see the local culture, but I am also networking with people in my field. So you are actually meeting people that can join “your network” and be your friends for the rest of your life or maybe future business partners, colleagues, etc! I think this is a better and more refined version of Couchsurfing, not simply another CS site.
Sounds more like Wayn meets Internations.
I like the concept. I believe there is an opportunity – parallel to Facebook – for a focused travel social network. So far no one yet has become “the” travel community. I don’t think users will find extra benefit in belonging to yet another community if they already belong to 2 or 3 similar communities, so competition is open for someone to grab this space quickly.
Sounds like a great idea, but have to agree with Sean on the name – reminds me of those times when I have been travelling and the food has disagreed with my stomach!
I also like the TripTrotting concept and think it has legs. Matching people of similar ages and interests …particularly interests related to studies / areas of expertise …. should make for lasting friendships.
It’s an interesting site and whilst similar to a number of other ‘local connection’ type services, it has some core differences that might help it grow.
As a traveller I am not sure I would want to join yet another community/network though and create another profile. If it were an add-on to Facebook or an app for the iphone it could be really cool, and I would probably use it to connect with like-minded travellers/locals.