I've built Villagers, a group travel app, in an attempt to overcome my own social isolation while working remotely, especially as someone who's friends are now largely parents and much less available for group travel.<p>I find small group travel magical from an interpersonal and experience standpoint but organizing trips is absolutely brutal. With Villagers, I wanted to see if software could overcome some of those planning challenges with financial incentives, social features, and automation -- especially around messaging.<p>I love climbing, so I've built a trip to co-work and climb in Red Rocks (Nevada) in November.<p><a href="https://villagersapp.com/t/gkkfv" rel="nofollow">https://villagersapp.com/t/gkkfv</a><p>I'm looking for 4-8 high EQ tech folks who'd like to co-work and climb. Everyone's identity will be verified and I'll make sure it's a broad culture fit (i.e. polite, respectful, reasonably extroverted, etc.). We'll keep the costs down to less than $500 per person for 3 nights.<p>For more social proof before you join me on a trip, you can click through my profile on the trip page above to see my LinkedIn work history as an early engineer at Plaid and most recently the founder of a 70+ person company (Tremendous).
I think you should change your demo trip, I clicked on it and got annoyed about how pedantic (for lack of a better word I can think of) the 'rules' were:<p><pre><code> Trip Rules
No pets
No parties
Quiet after 11pm
Alcohol allowed
No drugs
No marijuana allowed
</code></pre>
I mean it is realistic for a yoga trip, but in a demo you'd want to showcase the most fun way to use this, not the most patronising way.
I'm always fascinated by group travel apps although I certainly haven't seen a successful uber-app for managing all aspects of a trip.<p>I like the focus here on getting commitment from participants. That can be so challenging when putting together a trip.<p>It doesn't look like Villagers handles everything (and that's ok!) - e.g. when I went to create a new trip I noticed it looks like everything is based on having a single location - you can't set up lodging in location A for the beginning of a trip, have a few days on the trail hiking, and the lodging for the end of trip in location B (unless I missed it).<p>EDIT: Oh, and it looks like the lodging HAS to be an AirBNB (the field validates that the AirBNB URL contains AirBNB.com). That's certainly limiting.
What is your opinion on [0] ?<p>I disagree with him about " My best guess is that a truly great consumer service needs to be something that is can be used every day. " I use Wanderlog (YC19) almost every trip I do, a lot of my friends after I recommended this tool started using it. Yet it is kinda right - Wanderlog doesn't seem to be making big progress, although pandemic is probably responsible for that<p>[0] <a href="https://blog.garrytan.com/travel-planning-software-the-most-common-bad" rel="nofollow">https://blog.garrytan.com/travel-planning-software-the-most-...</a>
On a related note, I'm willing to personally act as a travel agent for a remote co-working trip among coworkers as a non-scaleable way to grow the platform initially and get user feedback. If you're interested in exploring in a fun 4-10 person trip with colleagues, email me at ben@villagersapp.com.
This is a problem as old as time. Over a decade ago I saw startups from Stanford trying to tackle this. This is not an expert perspective, but I believe the market is too small to really make it worth while. As alluded to, people in their 30s/40s lean into their family, children's activities etc.
> Alcohol allowed<p>> No drugs<p>???<p>> with verified identities (license or passport).<p>Also, hope you've thought through storing personal info like passports and driving licences mate. Not just for GDPR, but if you don't have liability insurance and a good legal team you are asking for trouble. Hope you don't get any data breaches!
I'd love to be able to see other peoples' past trip itineraries to get ideas about what things I might want to add to my own itinerary and how to structure it.
This is always an interesting app idea to me, but after trying group trips few ways with people, the most successful have been loosely coupled:<p>Pick a geographical location. Pick some dates that overlap. Plan your own trip. Keep things decoupled.<p>Then, just find times that you want to meet up. Just like regular life.<p>For things that require coordination, like a camping/canoe trip, email works well.
Cool, there is def some things to do with nomad trips. Thinking of working online + doing an activity altogether like Kitesurfing, skiing, scuba diving, freediving, paragliding etc.
Kudos on the site design; fast, responsive, clean. Are you able to you tell us about your stack?<p>Am I right in thinking that it's essentially Facebook Events but traveling?
Interesting idea. When I tap "Plan A Trip", the box color highlights, but nothing happens, and I don't see a way to get beyond that page.
My favorite tool for coordinating locations with people is <i>What 3 Words</i><p><a href="https://what3words.com/" rel="nofollow">https://what3words.com/</a><p>The map of the world is split into 3x3 meter squares with a unique three-word ID for each, e.g: twig.fleet.likely
looks awesome! I have also been working on a similar app in my free time. Looks like several people had this idea during covid since we all miss that in person interaction.