A new S$5 million (US$3.95 million) Kickstarter fund was announced during Singapore Budget 2013 back in March to support lifestyle concepts with strong tourism potential and scalability. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why we’re seeing more startups in the Singapore scene competing in the travel space (think Indiescapes, Travelogy, and Flocations).
Launched last August 2012, Singapore-based travel and lifestyle reviews portal TheSmartLocal.com is the new kid on the block, boasting close to 16,000 reviews to date.
TheSmartLocal editor-in-chief Bryan Choo tells us that the team is pretty stringent on who writes the reviews on the site and they are done by invitation only. It seeks to build a community of trusted reviewers, hailing from backgrounds such as book authors, startup founders, bloggers, and people who are well-versed in lifestyle and travel. In essence, the team wants to have reviewers on board who are passionate about sharing and writing their experiences. This way, it ensures that the reviews are true to what is being written, minimizing the problem of having fake reviews or competing firms lashing out against public submissions. Bryan adds that random reviewers often lament about their bad experiences and hardly do follow-up posts, which admittedly is a very Singaporean culture (an example here).
It also has a points system in place which acts like an incentive for members to contribute more on the site. With more written comments, reviews, and postings on forums, members will get more points.
TheSmartLocal was created to aid not just travelers, but also locals to make better decisions. Common frustrations such as where to find a good photographer for one’s wedding shot, to where one should bring his or her international friends when they visit – the site aims to answer these questions. Bryan elaborates:
There are many times where we exhaust our network and still have no information about things, often plunge into the unknown and end up with bad experiences. We want to help people not have to go through that. [That is] our aim, to help Singaporean consumers make better decisions, [to have a better knowledge] about everything Singapore.
But the site doesn’t just focus on Singapore, and has has already expanded to Malaysia (screenshot pictured right) as well. The team of six has yet to work out details on expansion to other countries, but will look into other nations by drawing inspiration from My Destination’s model.
The reviews portal currently has 50 regular reviewers on the site, and will be launching its Android application in the third quarter this year.
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