What do Smart Trip Platform and the history of human civilization have in common? Our civilization is built on collective learning, on our ability to transmit and share useful information. Each new generation did not have to learn and invent everything anew — they could use the knowledge accumulated by those who came before them. And this works for travel, too!
When we read guidebooks or travel websites, we draw on information collected by someone who visited the same destination before us. However, Smart Trip Platform will take this idea to the next level thanks to our chat rooms.
The concept of chat rooms is not new, of course, but we will be the first travel tech startup to have them. We see chat rooms as both a fantastic way to generate crowd wisdom and share experience. And to add to chatrooms’ practical usefulness, Smart Trip Platform users will be rewarded for moderating and giving valuable insight!
Imagine: you are an expert on some famous national park — Pantanal swamps in Brazil, for example. Or a city, a country, a particular attraction… So, to share your knowledge and earn some rating points in the process, you create a chat room in South America — Brazil section and you name it Pantanal. Those travelers who plan to visit Pantanal (one of the best places on the planet to see jaguars in the wild, by the way) check if there is a chat room on the topic — and sure enough, they find it.
You will start getting questions like, “How much does it cost to rent a motorboat for a day?”, “Which part of the reserve is best for jaguars?” and “What is the cheapest lodge?” As you reply, users will thank you with Likes, increasing your rating on the platform. Soon, other users who have already visited Pantanal will join you in answering questions.
Sure enough, some trolls or spammers may eventually appear, but as the chat room moderator, you will block them. The fact that you moderate a chat room will bring you some additional rating points every month, making you eligible for discounts and special offers for high-rated members.
What about all the useful information that appears in the chat room? Will it simply be gone, erased after a while? Of course not. First of all, chat history will be stored. Second of all, every important bit of information, every update and address and bus schedule will need to be copied into the Pantanal page in the Discovery section of the platform — our detailed travel guide. This editing can be done by you or other users (for example, those who acquire this info first-hand, by traveling to Pantanal), and whoever makes a useful addition to the travel guide page will be rewarded by rating points.
You see, while free online travel guides exist (Wikitravel and Wikivoyage, for example), they do not reward their authors, which means that many travelers have no motivation to add information. Smart Trip Platform will integrate its collective learning tools with its travel services system in a creative, seamless way: travel and learn, share your knowledge with others, earn discounts and other perks that help you travel even cheaper!
Chat rooms can also be a great tool for travel business to promote their services. If you own a lodge in the Pantanal and earn yourself a reputation of a real expert on the place, then tourists will more likely choose one of your travel packages. What’s more, businesses will have the option to place ads in chat room windows, pinning them at the top — in bright red letters, for example — or in the form of banners. The amount of advertising in chat rooms will be strictly controlled, so as not to make it intrusive and annoying, but it will definitely bring great visibility to travel firms.
Of course, chat rooms can be created not only for particular locations, but for events, too. The famous tomato-throwing festival La Tomatina in Spain or Holi in India are great examples — there is much one needs to learn to plan a trip focused on a specific event! What’s more, in such a chat room you can meet other travelers going to the same event, make friends and travel together! This also applies to group tours: imagine you booked a multi-day guided trip in the Pamir mountains, for example, and there are ten other people going on the same trip.
The tour organizer will create a private chat room just for the tour participants, where you can meet and get to know your future travel companions instead of exchanging emails individually or simply meeting them for the first time at the start of the tour. Isn’t it a neat idea?
What are your thoughts about our chat room concept? Can you think of any potential issues or provide useful examples? If yes, please do so in the comments — here, on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/STplatform/ and Telegram t.me/st_platform! And of course, remember: Smart Trip Platform token presale is in full swing, and you can still get an amazing discount on our TASH tokens at smarttripplatform.io.