Don’t want to follow a boring tour guide with a white flag guiding you to boring and overcrowded tourist spots? myRealTrip is an open marketplace for local guides and travellers that offers authentic customized guide services. Simply put, MyRealTrip is crowd-sourced tour guides in English, Korean and Japanese.
Traditional tours are often devoid of personal touch and often lure travellers into trips that are geared towards commercial advantage, and often misses the real experience of a travel destination due to lack of knowledge about the destination. MyRealTrip invites locals with profound knowledge of their region or local area to upload their own recommended tour itineraries. Travellers can easily skim through a diverse range of authentic itineraries, directly contact local guides, and customize the itineraries according to their needs. MyRealTrip is able to offer travellers a truly personalized service, with local guides who do not have a commercial interest in visiting certain locations or businesses. The company is also able to boast a vast range of tour options, as every guide will have their own view on what’s hot in their local region. In this way golf enthusiasts can pair up with a local golf expert and a shopaholic can connect to a guide with extensive knowledge of the best local shopping malls. The company has been funded by one of Korea’s most reputable angel investment group Primer and earlier this year the company secured $350.000 in funding from early stage VC firm BonAngels and other private angel investors. Currently, the business model for MyRealTrip is to take a commission of the local guides’ fees as their main form of income. But the team also wants to expand into a “range of services from sheer guide service to car rental, pickup, restaurant/performance/hotel booking in the near future,” Minseo Baek, founder, says before explaining that MyRealTrip’s vision is to become Asia’s leading travel company. With a lot of innovative and exiting apps targeting the travel industry, MyRealTrip is a company to look out for.
More about this article series
The KAPP article series will cover each of the 20 startups that took part in the KAPP Global Hub Program, which took Korean startups to two global startuphubs, and is followed with a series of targeted workshops to ensure that the relationships and experience gained during the overseas trips was fully leveraged. 10 startups went to Singapore to discover the South East Asian markets, build partner relationships and gain investment for global growth. The other 10 companies went to Israel to engage with, and learn from, experts in one of the World’s most prolific high-tech centres.
Previous articles from this series:
Vol. 1: AppDisco - Korea’s number 1 mobile Ad company, enjoying continued growth
Vol. 2: Malang Studio - Gamifying Alarms For Global Success
Vol. 3: Memebox - Koreas Leading Beauty Curation Service Memebox gunning for Thailand
Vol. 4: iamschool - Leading Communicative Innovation in the Education Sector
Vol. 5: Between - A SNS Just For You And Your Significant Other
Vol. 6: WePlanet - Reinventing The Age Old Journal
Vol. 7: SinglePet - Breaking New Ground For Pet Owners
Vol. 8: AHIUK - Bb, A New Feature Packed Video Sharing App