Triip Pte. Ltd is a startup that connects travelers and local experts around the world. Users are able to book authentic tours, hotel rooms, and accommodation across 228 countries.
The company is registered in Singapore with a Singapore Tourism Board license and has been operating since 2014. Since then they have raised $858,000 in seed funding, and acquired a database of over 1.9M hotels, and have 6,000 local guides at their disposal.
Triip Pte. Ltd is planning to do a reverse ICO to launch a new protocol for the travel industry TriipMiles.
Through the use of Blockchain technology, TriipMiles is creating an ecosystem for hotels, merchants, and local tour operators to unlock new ways to experience travel, and get instantly rewarded for their contributions to local experiences.
For instance, a hotel can offer TriipMiles to generate critical insights from guest surveys and valuable stories for digital marketing. Local businesses can offer TriipMiles as an incentive for frequent visits, or as payment to work-and-travel backpackers.
This can open up the world of work-and-travel / working-holidays, but creating a global currency for active travelers, and local tour guides that provide valuable labor and marketing content for small businesses and tour destinations.
The company aims to make Triipmiles (TIIM) the easiest protocol for travel businesses, which will solve 3 major problems that currently plague the travel industry:
Solution: decentralized approval and arbitration system
2. Customer Acquisition
Solution: P2P referral protocol
Solution: Secure, instant, and cost-efficient cross-border payment
The team consists of experienced members in the travel and tech industry. Most have contributed to Triip Pte. Ltd’s original success.
The Advisory board includes well-respected investors and experts in the blockchain and travel space.
TriipMiles crowd sale is scheduled for Quarter 3 2018 with a soft cap of 2,500 ETH and a hard cap of 18,750 ETH.
The current travel economy is highly centralized and inefficient:
Triip is creating a decentralized marketplace where TIIM tokens are used to incentivize all the players involved in the travel business to participate in a self-sustaining economy. All parties collaborate and process functions in a circular economy. TIIM tokens are rewarded as the medium of exchange under smart contracts.
Triip.me decentralizes the entire process, allowing tour guides to be reviewed, verified, promoted and compensated in Triipmiles directly by travelers.
TIIM are ERC20 tokens used within the TriipMiles ecosystem for important cases:
These tokens are rewarded to participants who perform certain activities:
Overall, TIIM tokens provide participants with an additional source of income for contributing to the Triip.me ecosystem, as well as discounts on services for spending the tokens within the ecosystem.
The millennial that works a part-time job in order to fund their dreams of traveling the world can do so by reviewing tours and resolving disputes in exchange for TIIM tokens. The tokens can be sold for fiat money or used to book tours on the Triip.me network.
A tour guide can use their years of experience to review newly created tours from the comfort of their home, earning TIIM tokens as a reward.
A touring company can use TIIM tokens to incentivize the Triip community to refer others to their tour, circumventing the traditional social media-advertising model that is expensive and unreliable.
Triip.me is initially building a hybrid solution that combines blockchain smart contract technology, with their existing infrastructure to deliver the best performance needed.
Smart contracts are primarily used to create and approve new triips, as well as book tours on Triip.me.
Triip creators have to first publish an unverified triip on their profile. The triip then becomes verified by at least 2 reviewers. A smart contract is set up between the triip creator, reviewers, and Triip’s community reserves.
The triip creator activates the contract by depositing a certain amount of TIIM tokens into the smart contract.
The Triip platform takes tokens from the community reserve pool to match the amount of TIIM tokens transferred by the creator.
These TIIM tokens are then used to incentivize reviewers’ to verify the tour’s content. Once a sufficient number of reviewers have verified the tour’s content, the contract is finalized, and the funds are evenly distributed to all reviewers.
Travelers book tours by putting the required amount of TIIM tokens into a smart contract (this is the tour price).
The tour guide must then fulfill their end of the contract by giving the tour. Once the tour is finished, and the traveler gives it a good rating, the contract will be finalized, and the TIIM tokens will automatically transfer to the tour guide.
All activities are recorded, immutable, and made public on the Ethereum Blockchain.
Triip connects the off-chain data from their centralized web application to their decentralized ‘on-chain’ smart contracts.
This includes the data of creators, customers, tour information, and other information required for booking a triip.
Triip.me plans to maintain a hybrid model that incorporates centralized and decentralized databases and frameworks. The development team views this as an essential part of connecting current travel business operations and partnerships to the Triip.me ecosystem.
The platform is currently being developed using Solidity on the Ethereum Blockchain. However, Triip CTO Kent Nguyen is not opposed to exploring other options for better scalability like Side-chains, Ethereum Casper or EOS.
Hai Ho and Ha Lam founded Triip.me in 2014. The husband and wife duo originally started the company as a University student club where members would provide city tours to visitors for free in order to learn English.
Since becoming an official business, the team expanded to incorporate experienced members in travel, tech, and most recently the blockchain space.
10 years experience building payment gateways, social networks, wearable hardware, community apps, and ebook apps.
Prior to Triip.me, Hai Founded and grew his own online community from 0 to 500,000 members within 1.5 years when studying at the University of Buffalo, SUNY.
Ha has over 10 years of experience in the travel and tourism industry, where she was a tour guide for international travelers visiting Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
She is also a mother of 3 who was featured on Forbes Asia 30 under 30 list in 2016.
Dr. Yap is a Principal Advisor with KPMG in Singapore, where he develops the firm’s growth strategy, including regional M&A projects.
He was previously trained as a US Navy seal and worked as a General Manager with Jebsen & Jessen (SEA).
Kent’s previous experiences include being the CTO of Silicon Straits, and Head Engineer of Grab Vietnam
Paul has been in various aspects of the financial industry for more than 20 years. Paul started as an auditor in the biggest audit firm in Singapore. He later focused on the financial industry, taking the lead in auditing listed stockbroking firms over a few years. Paul switched over to Mortgage Sales at HSBC Singapore in 2004. He was promoted to Senior Vice President of Mortgage Sales Department at HSBC in 2007 before joining ANZ as a Director (Head of Acquisition).
Dr. Mario Hardy, CEO of the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA)
Victor Chua, Forbes Asia 30 Under 30, Advisor/Investor: Currently Managing Director at Vynn Capital (Triip.me current investors)
Kenneth Tan, Advisor/Investor from Gobi Partners (VC fund that also contributed to Triip.me’s $858,000 seed round).
Joel Ng – Chief Investment Officer, Partner at XSQ.
Tiago Costa Alves – VP Asia Pacific at AppCoins and Aptoide (Android Store with 200M users).
Long Vuong – CEO of TomoChain and TomoChain Project Lead. TomoChain is a blockchain infrastructure project for decentralized apps. They’ve raised over $8.5 million in their ICO and currently have a market cap of $21.4 million.
Triip Pte. Ltd is an established company operating in 228 countries, with $858,000 in seed funding, 100k users, $1.5m in revenue and a database of over 1.9M hotels and 6000 local guides. Triip.me has spent 4 years working on government compliance. They are Board members of the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), which allows them to communicate with governments on a monthly basis.
The TriipMiles blockchain project will penetrate the market with the existing customers and business partnerships of Triip.me.
The founding team brings together 60 years of experience in both product development and travel.
Blockchain technology helps reduce the cost of triip approval and arbitration. The TIIM token economic model creates an incentive for tour companies, travelers, guides, arbitrators, and verifiers to all perform the activities needed to run a functional decentralized travel ecosystem. Triip.me’s P2P referral protocol circumvents the traditional social media-advertising model that is expensive and unreliable.
Triip.me faces competition from large companies like Airbnb, which recently entered the travel/touring space in December 2017. Other OTA’s also have a funding advantage over Triip.me because they can afford to spend more on data, market, technology, and human resources. Triip sees its adoption of blockchain technology as the primary way to fight off this competition. Currently, Airbnb is only considering blockchain for their review and rating applications.
Government regulation around crypto is still an ongoing issue. Governments usually have a large role to play in the tourism industry of most countries, so Triip.me will have to find a way to be compliant if they want to expand. Triip.me seems to have already started working with Governments, as they are board members of PATA, and the Singapore Tourism Board currently licenses them.
Furthermore, Tour guides who frequently perform tours around traditional public tourist sites are expected to get a Government license. If they can’t afford one, the platform allows them to raise money through crowd-funding to acquire the license. Using smart contracts, funders will be able to earn a percentage of a tour guide’s revenue for helping them acquire a license.
Team & Advisory board: Core team brings together 10 years of experience in both product development and travel. Advisors are also experienced in the travel and blockchain space. Score: 8
Stage of the project: White paper released, Global partnerships established, Triip.me is already a profitable business. Launches Universal Travel Scoring system, tour creators will be able to stake TIIM in order to verify their tour through a smart contract in Q4 2018. Score: 8
Project potential: With the help of their decentralized P2P network, Triip.me aims to save $10million in operating expenses for travel companies and create 3,000,000 new jobs for locals around the world. They will penetrate through their existing live platform. Score: 8
Community and Media: Telegram – 2,947 members. Twitter follower – 5,200. Score: 7.5
Token use: a tour creator will have to stake TIIM tokens in order to verify the tour. A traveler will get a discount for paying with TIIM tokens in the platform. Score: 8
ICO: Hard Cap – 18,750 ETH (~$9,375,000). 22% of all tokens sold via a private sale (30% Bonus, Invitation only). 11% of all tokens sold via public sale. Capped within 24hrs, fixed price. Employee tokens will be equally vested over a 12-month period, from ICO launch. The CEO’s tokens are equally vested over a 24-month period, from ICO launch. Score: 8.5
White paper: The white paper clearly outlines Triip’s value proposition, describes the architecture and technology in a way that is easy to understand. It could have gone into more detail about Triip’s consensus protocol, and how nodes will validate transactions on the network. Score: 8.5
Backend and Technology: Hybrid off-chain and on-chain model. Blockchain is used for smart contracts between all parties involved in the travel economy. However, data is still stored on a centralized server. Score: 8
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