Social travel startup Tripping introduces a new take on exchange or rental marketplaces with the launching of its discovery engine this week that aggregates listings found in world renowned vacation rental sites.
Tripping Takes Social Travel Sites To a New Level
This site is taking advantage of the successes earned by Couchsurfing and Airbnb that provides travellers with the opportunity to connect with new people as they search for accommodations in their travel destinations.
The site’s new engine has over 500,000 listings coming from a multitude of sites such as Roomara, HomeAway, 9flats, Flipkey and iStopOver. Tripping aims to be the largest peer-to-peer home rentals aggregator in the Web.
The startup debuted last year and has since worked towards connecting locals and travellers for a more intimate inside scoop of their travel experience. The release of this search engine is targeted to enhance the site’s offerings. It provides travellers with access to over 15,000 cities all over the world with listings of rentals and people complete with property details and map locations in order to provide an easier comparison and full property picture.
Moreover, the site’s search engine also collects ratings for rentals coming from several sites in order to provide users with a better view of sources that are frequented by the crowd. Tripping’s dashboard also gets a new look with the addition of a Facebook integration that offers users the ability to find mutual friends using the site as well as recommendations and places their friends are staying. A separate tab also allows users to save their own favorite listings and sites that they can easily go back to at a later time.
Tripping aims to stand out from the crowd with these new offerings. The main selling point that this social travel startup provides is the interest-based approach in connecting and renting on communities and locations. For example a biker may choose to stay in a place that is owned by a biker as well, that way a traveller can also get recommendations for great bike routes in the locality. This factor adds a certain degree of trust and social proof into the deal as a traveller can even go take rides with the partner home owner.
