are you up for a Triptease ?

Triptease is a place where people save and share the best of their travel. Putting images front and centre, they capture what it was really like. Taken from their description : “We love travel. We love everything about it. The hotels, the restaurants, the bars and the wild beach parties. We believe getting out your own front door and heading off to a new destination might be the healthiest thing you can do. Travel reviews are a decade out of date. Travel, perhaps the most photo-worthy of all pastimes, is overrun with dull, anonymous text reviews. It's time for a makeover. We put photographs at the heart of Triptease. The process is easy, but the result is powerful. We help you create reviews worth sharing with the world.”

Triptease is a new kind of social site for travel. However, they do have a business side, since they aim to be working together with the industry. For business owners / users, you can set up a special account so that people know who you are. By encouraging your guests to share their experiences and create, Triptease expands your info and links back to your site. Tripteasers love sharing their experiences with friends and family. Every one of these reviews can have a direct link back to your website. As per their saying : “Happy guests become an army of marketers. Help your bottom line and cut out OTAs.”

Frustration with travel reviews drove Triptease founder Charlie Osmond to develop the service after six years working in social media for big names across fashion and politics. The startup is privately funded with Osmond investing proceeds from previous ventures as well as receiving some angel investment. He is joined by co-founder Alasdair Snow, Chris Warren Gash, marketing, Elsie Rutterford, business development, Pawel Lipka, development and Andrea Perrini, design. Osmond says Triptease is going after the luxury end of the global online travel market which is worth an estimated $75b. Competition is massive between Facebook because of its volume of social conversations and reviews giant, TripAdvisor. “We’re after a higher-end audience. When it comes to review creation, a typical user for us is more likely to be someone who would never contribute to Tripadvisor. When it comes to browsing reviews, Tripadvisor is a more direct competitor.” Revenue will be drawn from affiliate fees from click-throughs and the company is also planning some secondary services and revenue streams. “At present the industry encourages guests to post ratings to third-party review sites. Every review posted drives bookings via OTAs who take a cut from the hotel. We’re taking a different approach based around review freshness (less than six months old). If a partner (hotel, agent or airline) encourages a guest to create a review on Triptease, for a period of six months, while the review is fresh, we link directly back to the partner for free – no OTAs in the way.” [1]

[1] Ref. http://www.tnooz.com/article/triptease-wants-to-refresh-the-reviews-space-putting-an-end-to-ugly-faceless-text/