This concept really resonate with me. I live in New Orleans, which gets lots of tourists. Many of them will spend their entire trip at the culturally hollow bourbon st, overpriced hotels and bars that people who live here would roll their eyes at. There's much better (& cheaper) places to eat and drink. Also, who wants to visit a city only to hang out with other tourists? Hopefully, ViaHero launches in NOLA soon.
@tdavidson I started building this because 300 million people want trip planning help from an actual human but aren't getting it, plus increasingly travel is about local experiences and not landmarks. With the growth in the collaborative economy and millennial international travel (they love local culture and experiences - 70% use Airbnb vs 3% of baby boomers), the writing was on the wall.
Most of our Heroes (local planners) are Airbnb hosts or ex-tour guides.
There's been a lot of chatter re. the power of bots and AI-inspired tools to help make travel better. In fact, I stumbled on this earlier version of a "bot-assisted" travel agent yesterday from @2pasc (https://twitter.com/daveambrose/...). However, what about good old paper itineraries when you're about to take off?
ViaHero helps you interact w. a local "Hero" to guide a more thorough travel experience. Their first market is Cuba.
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@daveambrose Glad that you went through the slides.... :-P
Hi everyone, I'm the founder of ViaHero.
We're working to redefine the travel agent through the collaborative economy. Make trip planning less stressful and more authentic by using a local expert to plan your custom trip and start traveling like a local. Get more than just help with booking, get custom local insight and a guide you can use while traveling.
Thanks to Dave for listing - looking forward to feedback and answering any of your questions.
Awesome idea and love to see great companies like this from the burgh! How will this platform compete with free / existing solutions like couchsurfing?
@mikejcunn Thanks! Think of our Heroes as travel agents that are incentivized by good reviews and not just pre-packaged tours or more expensive trips with high commissions. They do what's right for the customer and get a flat fee. With ViaHero you don't have to stay on a couch, plus we'll help you with your whole trip.
Hi there everyone. I lead the engineering team that built ViaHero. One thing that's not apparent from customer facing side is the wonderful technology we've built to allow the Heroes to build trip guides efficiently and provide great quality trip guides for many customers without sacrificing any of their authentic local perspectives. Customers will get a beautiful, information packed and portable trip guide to take with them anywhere.
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Smart People Should Build Things - Dr. Tabasum Mir, Founder of MirSkin
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