25 August 2016 – The new booking platform TRVL from entrepreneur Jochem Wijnands is preparing for a soft launch in September. Then two hundred agents worldwide will start to compose and sell travel. According to Wijnands, the technology is so good that everyone can become a travel agent. “We are the Uber of the travel world.”
TRVL is still an online travel magazine? Why the step to bookings?
“We started in 2010 with TRVL, a travel magazine for the iPad. We had great plans for this, but soon the focus was 100 per cent on Prss, the publishing software for compiling iPad magazines such as TRVL. As a startup you can not do everything at once. Prss was purchased by Apple in 2014. After the acquisition, I spent a year at Apple to help integrate Prss into Apple News. When I returned I could focus on TRVL again. It is of course a limited model, making a magazine for iPad users. So I started thinking about how we can help the reader, in addition to offering inspiration for travel. My conclusion was that there is room in the booking process to add value. ”
How?
“There is a huge amount of choice. That’s nice, but also a problem, because you’re spending an incredible amount of time before you can actually book a trip. And then there remains an uncertain feeling – have you chosen the right hotel? Moreover, mobile booking will only get bigger in the coming years. This requires a different, new approach to searching and booking. We therefore started building a better booking platform than what exists on the market today. Initially we had travel agencies in mind as a target group. But it is so easy to use that we thought: why do not we open TRVL to everyone who likes to compose travel? For example, the concept was born of a peer-to-peer booking platform from and for travel enthusiasts. ”
