Giving digital nomads the tools to manage and co-create group trips.
Founding designer of CoTrip, a web based platform that allows nomads to plan, manage and collaboratively co-create short-medium term travel experiences.
Mission:
CoTrip was founded in 2022 after spending many years working and travelling as a digital nomad and finding a gap in the market for a collaborative trip planner and marketplace for finding, hosting and sharing private and public group trips. Our mission is to connect people through travel and help people share and co-create delightful travel experiences.
Problems
Group travel is outdated and targeted at older generations
Traditional group travel experiences are organised by agencies or third parties that are formally structured, expensive and target either older retirees, or 18-30s looking to party. There's very little movement in the group travel market for the new digital nomad demographic that has grown 49% in the last year.
Making connections as a digital nomad is usually centered around work, not travel experiences.
24% of digital nomads adopt the lifestyle because of their desire to travel and be location independent, but there are few services for connecting with people to travel together and share experiences outside of work. Loneliness and lack of connection is the #1 reason nomads return home.
Lack of organisation and inefficiency in planning trips.
Planning a trip with anyone, nomad or not, usually requires long Whatsapp threads, exchanging bank details and sharing a slew of links to accommodation. It's hard to reach consensus and have all the information laid out in a useful way that makes it possible to build a trip collaboratively.
User interviews
Market research
Market potential & validation
Before ideating on possible solutions, I researched the market potential and found the TAM, SAM and SOM to identify the possible market size and opportunities for the digital nomad space.
Solution
After surveying many competitors in the space, and interviewing 20+ prospective customers, I identified a solution that could address the current problems we found in the space.
Designing the platform
I decided to split the platform into three different areas:
An open marketplace for users to find public trips to join
A ‘trip management’ dashboard for trip organisers to plan, coordinate and host a trip
A listings page for trip attendees to join and collaboratively co-create their travel experience by using features such as voting, contributing to the shared itinerary and adding images, links and comments to the shared space.
Business modal
I explored many different modals, but ultimately decided a freemium subscription modal would be best for the service we are offering. It allows users to experience the product and gain adoption before upgrading to paid features.
We acquire new customers by allowing them to host or join one trip for free:
Users will be given a set number of credits which they will spend for each trip they want to request to join
Users can subscribe to have unlimited credits for 80€ per year
Premium users can host unlimited trips
Competitive advantages
Easy to use planning tool that allows users to plan a group trip collaboratively.
No middle men or third party agencies involved (coliving.com, bookretreats.com etc.)
Complete flexibility for the host to decide who to travel with unlike co-living spaces or hostels.
Hosts can organise their own itineraries
Post MVP Features
Shared digital wallet
For users to have a temporary shared bank account for group expenses. CoTrip will take a commission on each transaction.
Collaborative editing tool
Real time editing of trip details with features such as polls, voting, add suggestions etc.
Deposit manager
Hosts can collect trip deposits for making reservations in a safe and secure way.
Partnerships
Integrated partnerships with travel services: insurance, car rental, accommodation, transport etc.
Thank you!
If you are interested in reviewing the full pitch deck - please reach out to me at helenstead@live.co.uk