MoreTrips

Problem Space 

Problem Statement  

People who travel to new places need a way to do research for a trip more easily because it can be an overwhelming process that can discourage someone from travelling. 

Problem Background  

With the peak of the Covid-19 Pandemic behind us, we are seeing more and more people (individuals, groups, and families) wanting to travel across the world and experience new things. 

Although the desire to travel is there, and studies from the U.S. Travel Association show that 55% of Americans are planning to prioritise leisure travel spending, it doesn’t change how tedious and overwhelming the process of planning a trip is. For many people deciding what to do on a trip takes a lot of work and research. People want to make sure what they decide to do resonates with them the most, but what does it take to get the information you’re looking for? Most travelers use at least 4 different sites/apps (Google, Travel blogs, Youtube, Tiktok, etc) to search for information for what to do on their trip. Then they have to filter through the content to make sure the information they find aligns with the type of experience that they are looking for.

The problem is that everyone is doing their individual research trying to put things together to make an itinerary on their own and hoping that it works out. Both the process of doing the research and the hope that the trip they planned is good, creates additional stress for the traveler.

Research Insights

I conducted a survey to understand the travel planning experience where I received over 60 responses and I followed up with 5 user interviews from this group. Here are the key insights:

• The leading motivation for people to travel is to explore new places vs just relaxing
• The top 3 most important thing for people to figure out before they arrive to their travel destination are: activities to do, food/restaurant, and cost
• People sometimes hesitate to travel due to the concern of not picking the right things to do, not picking the right places to eat, and overall not putting together an itinerary that makes sense. 

• They are overwhelmed by all the options out there when doing research and they want reassurance that they are picking the right things.

• Many people trust longform text (written information) for travel suggestions over short videos because they believe short videos don’t always give the full perspective of a place. 

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The main takeaway is that people absolutely still want to travel to new places and experience new things, but due to all the money and effort it takes to travel, they feel a lot of pressure to make sure they get the best experience out of their trip. This pressure makes potential travelers overwhelmed when trying to do research and the focus is to alleviate the pressure of planning a trip and picking the right things to do.

Landing on the Solution

When thinking about a solution to this problem, the question I had to answer was how do we make the research process for activities to do and finding places to eat on a trip easier? The answer is to 100% plan someone’s trip for them after they give input of what they want. While we can’t provide this specialized service of planning everyone’s trip for them, we can’t create a platform where they can share and use other people’s itineraries of trips that went well.

The solution I am proposing is a community based platform where travelers can connect and share their itineraries, insights, and tips for places that they’ve traveled to before because why should you do the research if someone else has done it already? 

You may ask what makes this platform, MoreTrips, different from other sites like TripAdvisor and I have 2 main reasons. 

1. The first reason is that this platform really prioritizes different types of travelers finding the right information for them and not just the highest rated things to do in a specific location. Each user has to create a travel profile where they will specify the type of travel they are and the type of trips they are planning for. This information will be used to help the user get information that more closely matches what they desire out of the trip. For example, a person who is looking to do a solo trip in Mexico City will be directed to posts of people who’ve done solo trips there and potentially posted their own itinerary or learned lessons. 
2. The second reason is that since this is a community based platform, no services through the site will be offered. TripAdvisor allows you to book tours, find rental cars, and find vacation rentals. When services are offered like this it makes the lists and suggestions feel like it’s not as reliable since what people do or search impacts TripAdvisor’s pockets. MoreTrips really wants to build a community of trust where people provide their genuine feedback or review of places or things they did. 

At the end of the day, the goal of MoreTrips is to build a community where some travelers can share their itineraries, insights, and suggestions for specific destinations and other travelers can use the information shared to plan their trip. It’s not just a platform with a list of the top restaurants or top things to do.

Future Steps

If I were to continue building out this product, the first thing I would do is work with a developer and designer to build an MVP.  This MVP would allow users to create travel profiles and post information. 

After at least 50-100 posts are shared on the platform, below are a few things I would do with the product.

• Keep iterating the product to add specific tags to allow the algorithm to guide users to the most relevant post.
• Allow users to ask open questions and comment on posts

• Allow users to communicate directly (if open) to talk about specifics in travel plans
• Keep optimizing the UI/UX design to really give the user the best experience on the platform. 
• Very Future- Include a feature to allow users to start building a “Trip Game Plan” in the product as they are reading, liking, and savings posts