About this project
Travlr Feed is a Travel Review company that provides its users with an online as well as offline access to user-written reviews about all-encompassing travel products and services the world throughout. The honesty and transparency of the reviews with the feature to prove the authenticity of the review makes us unique. Travlr Feed aims to work together with every travel based company to carve out a non-competitive market. The final goal is to provide every travel resource at one place. Travlr Feed will be the world’s only transparent review-based travel website.
Problem
1- Honest Travel Review Website: There is no transparent and honest travel review website in the world. No websites can prove that their reviews come from unbiased consumers of their product.
2- Safety of Travelers: No website provides a safety net to travelers after they arrive at a new destination.
3- Social Traveling: There is no safe network for travelers to socialize and meet up with each other.
Solution
We are creating a web and application based platform where our users will have a guarantee to get honest and authentic data. Let’s explain through an example. Customer’s Name: Roshan Kumar. Hotel Name: Hotel Taj A customer named Roshan Kumar is looking for a decent priced hotel in Agra where he could feel safe since he has never been to Agra. He comes to our website and looks for hotels in Agra and suddenly finds a hotel named, “Hotel Taj.” He wants to check the reviews and book the hotel. He finds decent reviews and decides to book the hotel. As soon as he books the hotel, we receive his information and we forward pertinent information to the hotel. After completing his application, our website links Roshan to a secure, encoded review page on the application or he receives an email asking to review the hotel based on his first perception - “What he read and saw in pictures, is that true?” etc. This email has a validation code which has been enabled only to his account. This means reviews can only be completed by customers that have already made use of the product. After he checks out of his hotel, the hotel will notify us that he used the facilities. Then he will receive another email from us asking him to share his experience through a review with another validation code. This use of transparency and validation codes makes the reviews honest as they can’t be posted by anyone who didn’t stay in the hotel. Why will every user review his/her stay? We will offer straight a reasonable percent cashback on every user review as soon as we approve the review. This approval is just to make sure the customer actually wrote something and did not just type senseless data to get the cashback. Now, let’s talk about the other part. The customer is new to the city and has no idea how to get to the hotel. He lands on the Agra Airport but doesn’t trust the taxis and cabs since there are a lot of scams where taxi drivers bluff the tourist and get them into different hotels and so on. So we will provide some optional features for our users. They could go through the app or website, or call our customer care number to get a cab. We will contact the hotel if their is no GPS trackable taxi companies available in the area. We will ask the hotel to get them a taxi to the hotel. This taxi driver won’t be able to fool our user since we will have his credentials and his bias will work for us, not against us. Now here’s how we will incorporate this into our social network - the customer has another option to get a shared taxi. We will ask our user to share his travel and stay information on the application but that information will not be published to the public. Instead, all the users who agree to share their information will be able to see each other’s information. The safety of their information still needs to be managed but this way, all the users who share their information are not unknown and also are travelers so there is a minimal risk of user safety. This platform of social traveling could help the travelers to share the same taxi going to the hotel, thus relieving stress and reducing costs as travellers work together. Now just imagine this concept relative to all the other aspects of traveling.
Risks and challenges
Q- Why should I as a traveler go to this honesty travelling website or application and book a hotel or hostel through it rather than going directly to a hotel’s website and booking there and using the travel review website just as a source of information without paying anything to it?
A- Our whole business idea is based on the unique service we are providing which is honesty in travel reviews. If we provide the best reviewed source of information out there, we could have a better commission deal with the hotels than the other travel companies. To have people book through us, we will provide the maximum discount by compromising our own economic interests in the beginning. Once we get a lot of users booking through us, we will become a reliable source for booking and reviews and thus we could be able to ask for larger commission rate to our hosts. And ultimately we will be able to provide the maximum market discount to our users.
Q- How is travlrfeed different from Facebook or other social media platforms that already exist in the market?
A- There is a big problem with most social media platforms these days. They make people emotionally and socially separated from each other. People start living virtual life texting and putting “likes” to each other in facebook most of the time. In contrast, Travlr Feed will trigger social contacts among travelers beyond the website or application, and allow them to communicate in the real world. One more problem with facebook is that it is centralized, in other words, too much information is submitted to the administration of facebook, which is used to narrow customer’s options in terms of how to spend their time. However, Travlr Feed will let our customers spend more time with each other and enjoy their human nature in real world.
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