Why Travelopy?

After listening to Dande Ringelmann (Indiegogo) talk at Startup School 2014, it makes me rethink of why I am so obsessed with this travel idea. Dande wanted to “Democratize access to funding”, and she is very sure about that, and I want to be as sure as she is.

I find travel planning and research too time consuming, thus I wanted a simpler and faster solution. The best travel information provider like TripAdvisor (or Gogobot, Wikitravel, etc.) doesn’t solve my problem, so I needed a better product. What kind of Travel I am obsessed about? The DIY type (usually practice by backpacker), where I get to know and select the activities and destination which interest me at my own pace.

Why I want to build Travelopy? I want to make DIY travel so simple that I can pack my bags and go anytime. Tickets are usually affordable with budget airline (problem solved) where hotel booking is fairly easy with booking.com and other alternatives (problem solved). Travelopy focus on to know where to go and what to do without the need to spending hours or days in front of a computer. It might sounds mundane or perhaps thousands of people are solving this (or claimed to be solved). The thing is, I still can’t pack my bags now and know what to do next. The drag of planning is stopping me from traveling more often. I can have a leap of faith, but I still need a lot of time and effort to figure it out eventually. I just want to pack my bag and have fun, where packing shall be the most torturing thing I experience.

Before the Internet age, guidebooks used to solve this problem pretty well. 5 years ago I roam India depending mostly on Rough Guides, where I just have faith with the book and it works pretty well. As I travel more I become more hunger for more hidden gems, new things, not the usual stuff, something one or two guide book writers might miss out. At times I also wish the guide books have more features: search, ranking, user contributed tips, etc. I wanted the best organized collective knowledge (Wikipedia), with all common questions answered (StackOverflow).

I want to make DIY travel fun and hassle-free.

Travelopy will churn out happy travelers in the end.