Triip links travelers with knowledgeable locals, gets funding from Gobi Partners

Husband-and-wife duo Hai Ho and Ha Lam started their travel startup Triip in Vietnam at a time when investments were hard to come by. The ecosystem hadn’t developed yet, the government didn’t provide support, and there were many cases where companies tanked after getting investor money.

“We did not have enough cash to build a real team to push for growth. After bootstrapping for more than a year, we decided to go all-in and sold our house. It was a hard decision as we already had two kids back then,” recalls Hai. That was in 2014.

Today, Hai tells us Triip, which brings the Airbnb concept to local tours, just raised US$500,000 in seed funding from Shanghai-based Gobi Partners, which has a portfolio of over 130 companies in China and Southeast Asia.

Crowdsourcing model

While the funding gives Triip more runway to grow, the company has come a long way from its early days.

The business idea actually started with Ha back when she was in university and worked as a tour guide, which was a way for her to practice her English. Along with other English-savvy friends, she would take tourists around Ho Chi Minh city and show them popular sights. They did this for four years until Ha’s tours ranked as one of the top activities to do in the city on Tripadvisor. Turning the idea into a business made sense so she, her husband, and their friends set up the company in 2013.

Triip takes after Airbnb, crowdsourcing local tours around the world. The platform allows anybody to create their own tour package and sell it to travelers.

Unlike traditional tours, which generally take a one-size-fits-all approach and often cover only the most popular and crowded destinations, Triip’s tours are personally curated by locals, whom Triip calls as “Triip creators.”

Triip takes after Airbnb, allowing anybody to create their own tour package and sell it to travelers.

Because the tours are crowdsourced, you can expect the most unique experiences from Triip. You can ride a small boat and visit floating markets to discover life in the Mekong Delta with a local family, or travel a little further from the busy, smoky, and noisy center of Hanoi to visit an ancient castle, with a student as your tour guide.

Triip started with local tours in Vietnam, which is still largely an emerging tourist market, and soon expanded to different cities overseas. Now you can also book a Harvard professor to give you a private tour of Harvard or The Tourist’s film location manager to show you scenes where the movie was shot.

Today, Triip is available in 86 countries, with 5,000 experiences curated by over 9,000 Triip creators, up from 10 countries and 300 experiences in December 2014.

“The authenticity of our local experience is unmatched. Our Triip creators deliver their experiences from their heart, not for profit. They already have their own day jobs, so they are not commission-driven like many traditional tour guides. In this way, we believe travelers can have a more authentic and enjoyable experience,” says Ha.

Hai adds, “We are changing the way people travel worldwide, creating jobs for locals and helping cities preserve local cultures. In doing so, Triip is creating tangible benefits for tour guides, travelers, and local governments.”

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What’s in store