Small businesses: Travel startup Tripwell is betting on a post-Covid overseas travel boom

Kiwi duo Hayley Gray and Nick MacAvoy explain why now is the right time to launch an online travel platform targeting the influencer market and how raising $2-3 million will fund its international expansion.

What does your business do?

Grey: Tripwell is a creation platform specifically designed for travel. It allows content creators to publish travel content and monetize that content through bookings. It offers consumers a place to discover unique travel ideas and inspiration directly from travel bloggers, videographers, influencers, bloggers and writers. Rather than getting information from big booking platforms, users can get ideas and recommendations for upcoming trips from people with real stories. The idea comes from a trend we’ve seen called “social commerce”; the desire of Gen Z and Millennials these days not only to book travel online, but also to buy directly from where they draw inspiration from. We launched the business last week, and basically it’s like Pinterest for travel.

What was your motivation for starting the business?

I took some time off a few years ago, before Covid, to travel. I wanted to do a lot and I was only a few months old; I wanted to do a wellness retreat, snorkeling and places where I could eat good food, but I didn’t know where to go [location] inspiration and recommendations from. I wanted to get advice from people I knew and people with similar preferences to mine who I could trust, so at that time I followed quite a few travel bloggers and browsed blogs, Instagram, YouTube and even Pinterest to get ideas and make my own lists. During this time, it occurred to me that there was no rich content platform available to allow consumers to discover content and book trips directly from where they were inspired, so I started talking to travel content creators to learn more about them, how they run their businesses and monetize their content, and how they interact with their audience.

There was a bit of an underlying theme in that a lot of them were looking for other ways to make money and ultimately take a bigger slice of the overall revenue pie. Brands and partnerships are a big deal for content creators as one of the biggest revenue generators, but it depends on the whims of brands and is often a one-time job, so I wanted to build something that offered creators the opportunity to earn passive income with all of their content available and easily discoverable.

MacAvoy: Unlike a social media platform like Instagram or TikTok, where only the most recent content appears at the top, our platform keeps all content – new or old – up to date. We’re basically creating a homepage, a central online social network hub for creators, so all of their different accounts can connect to Tripwell and when a consumer visits their Tripwell, they can be directed to the account that interested. We aim to be a one stop shop for all of their online visitors.

How was the company financed?

The venture was mostly personally funded by myself, Nick and our product manager Liam Houlahan. We have also received funding through Dovetail Ventures, a software agency and venture capital fund based in New Zealand and Australia, but we have only just started our seed round. It is still secret, but we are currently busy talking to investors from Australia, New Zealand and the United States. We look forward to closing the round and continuing to build a world-class team and grow. We are looking to raise between 2 and 3 million dollars, the final figure is in discussion with the VCs.

How big is your team ?

It’s a team of three at the moment. We are currently raising enough funding for 18 months to expand the platform globally and grow our team to around eight people.

You worked on this business despite border restrictions and at a time when very little travel was allowed. Why did you decide to start now?

Grey: We had the idea for this pre-Covid. We were only a few months working on the business when the pandemic hit. At the time, we wondered if now was the best time to launch a travel platform. We took a contrary view and noted that a global crisis like this would disrupt the travel industry in major ways, but it would provide opportunities. We saw then, and we see even more so now, that travel is changing and the way people travel and seek to travel in a post-Covid world is vastly different than before.

We’re excited to launch something that lends itself to the new ways people plan to travel. People are looking for more meaningful journeys, more ways to travel locally – road trips are very popular right now, as are slower journeys. We see a lot of people looking to travel locally to tiny cabins or places that aren’t too far from home, often in wilderness settings just to take some time off, so we’re really looking at how people think about the trips. There are big safety and health concerns and factors and we’re tracking that and making sure we have a platform that can adapt to these changing tides as the industry basically starts to grow again. It’s a great time to get started now, as we’re just starting to see borders open up and people are getting more and more comfortable with the idea of ​​travel.

MacAvoy: Creators have never been more eager to come back and travel again and share that with their audiences, so there’s a real hunger on both sides that we and they can capitalize on. In Europe and the United States, travel is already returning to normal and we will soon be in Australasia, and we are likely to see pent-up demand as well.

Grey: We’re currently only launching in Australia and New Zealand, and we think there’s going to continue to be a lot of local travel until people feel comfortable again, so we have a lot of content and ideas available on Tripwell at the moment which is based around local travel in Australia and New Zealand, but we have exciting plans to start expanding globally later this year to include regions such as Europe and the United States, as we see more international travel from Australians and New Zealanders.

How does Tripwell make money?

It is thanks to the reservations that we earn money. Signing up costs nothing to creators or users. The biggest revenue driver in the travel industry is bookings, so we have injected ourselves into this booking flow. We pass consumers on to booking sites and booking partners, and for all bookings made, we take a reduction in the booking fee – a commission, and we pass on some of that commission to the content creators.

It is similar to TripAdvisor in that it transfers consumers to other booking platforms, travel providers and partners to make a reservation, where they also take a cut. We have more than 20 booking partners on our platform so far.

MacAvoy: We make money when our creators make money. When a reservation is made, we give them about 80% of the revenue we receive.

Which content creators and influencers use Tripwell?

Grey: We have around 25 designers on the platform, including top three New Zealand designers including Stephanie Lai of The Travel Kid, Hamish Boyt and Craig Campbell. So far we have about 500 posts on Tripwell. We’re talking to creators around the world to join us, not just those based and living in Australia and New Zealand.

Where do you see the company in three to five years?

In the long term, we see a huge opportunity to enable anyone to post and monetize their content on the Tripwell platform. We believe anyone has the potential to be a creator on the platform, so our ambition is to empower entrepreneurs to reinvent themselves as travel creators and ultimately turn their passions into profits. We plan to offer new ways for travel brands and businesses to connect with new audiences as well.

The future of work is changing and many people are turning to more freelance jobs, especially with the disruptions we’ve seen during the pandemic. There are a lot of new and really cool creative platforms out there that allow people to look for other ways to monetize and convert their passions into profits, but one thing we haven’t seen is a content-specific platform travel for people who want to build a business and a livelihood for themselves, so I think our platform will enable that.

The government recently announced that self-isolation will no longer be required for fully vaccinated Kiwis returning to the country. What does this mean for a revival of the international travel industry?

MacAvoy: I expect a big travel boom again. Our local tourism industry is also soon to get a very big boost – thanks only to the return of the Kiwis. I think we are going to see a big local boom that is so badly needed and I know Kiwis, myself included, are really desperate to go back overseas if possible.

What advice would you give to people looking to start their own business?

Be bold in your vision and scale what you are about to achieve, that way you can stay focused on true north. I think we’ve done that very successfully at Tripwell, ensuring that any decision we make points to that true north.