A New Way Forward.

Hi friends,

I hope you all had a lovely summer. We have been busy working on something really special, I believe. And I would like to invite you into the reasoning behind it today. Just a little peek…

While we were at Techstars, we learned how important it is to identify a so-called "crawl-through-glass pain," so that what we create wouldn't just be a nice-to-have, a vitamin, if we stick to this metaphor, but a painkiller. Something our customers desperately need.

While I completely agree with this concept, I always had a hard time applying this to travel. Yes, I believe travel is an essential aspect of our lives, I believe we need to change it so that we can preserve it, and I also believe it makes people better, creates empathy and understanding, all things that we desperately need in these divided times. But while I would suffer deeply if you told me I could never travel again, I still struggle to identify a crawl-through-glass pain here. Yes, I see problems with the travel industry, and lots of them. Things that I wish would exist, things I want to be easier to find. But real pain? I don't know.

On the other side however, the pain is so blatantly obvious. Our partners, especially the ones who aren't in the tourism business but opened their doors to a select few visitors mainly to keep the lights on, and to be able to keep doing what they do best: preserve their culture, the environment, or both. These folks don't want to add an extra tour, or five, once they start selling out the one tour they already accommodate during their busy week of providing for place and people. What they really need is the security of funds that allows them to sustain their organization. That's it. No profits, no fuss. Just the ability to do what they do best with ease and safety. And with all of the government funding slashed left and right, that's definitely not a given right now.

Obvious pain, right?