[Published Post] Filipino start-up Tripkada bares tech updates, celebrates gains
Wednesday, August 14, 2024
Tripkada, the first and fastest-growing trip-pooling platform in the Philippines, recently launched its new app for iOS devices at its first Travel Meet-up for the year, which also allowed partners and investors to touch base with the start-up and its growing traveller community.
Tripkada co-founder and CEO April Cuenca presented stakeholder updates, revealing that the platform now hosts an average of 50 to 150 trips weekly. Its community to date has more than 10,000 travellers and over 300 organisers, with more than 800 applications currently underway. She described the vetting procedure for organisers as “rigorous,” with reviews from verified clients enforcing a continuous screening process even after organisers have passed training in first aid, life support, emergency response and traveller ethics.
She also fielded questions concerned with the tour offerings of the platform, sharing that Tripkada found bicycle tours “expensive” because of the protocol necessary to conduct them. “Biking tour organisers have to have a support vehicle and certified first-aid respondents on board,” she explained. “Biking requires endurance – cyclists travel through dangerous trails and open roads.”
She discussed the start-up’s plans to expand all over the country, an archipelago of more than 7,100 islands. “We are working to connect with airlines right now so that we can provide tour bundles with flights to places like Batanes (the northernmost Philippine island province near the Taiwan boundary), Siargao, Palawan, and Cebu,” she said.
The new app, geared towards consumers or ‘joiners,’ allows users to view, book, record, bookmark and review trips by ‘organisers’ who are verified by the company. “Travellers can now get the trip-joiner app from either iTunes or Google Play," explained Tripkada co-founder and CTO Ragde Falcis. “Tour organisers can download the Android organiser app, but if you’re using an iOS device you can still create trips using the web version which also allows you to join trips.”
Cuenca also shared an important app update: “While we haven’t yet launched this feature officially and fully, it’s already possible to book trips that require air travel through Tripkada. If you open our app and explore it, you should be able to find our Skyscanner menu.”
Regarding the chatbot’s capabilities, Cuenca had this to say: “If you’re on free mobile internet data and want to browse our full trip menu, or if you want someone to talk you through the booking process, you can access our messenger assistant.”
The last revelation of the night was
that the start-up platform now allows travellers to use PayPal for credit and
debit payments as well as TagCash for mobile wallet payments. These are on top
of Dragonpay-facilitated money transfers as well as online and offline bank
deposits which are already available payment options in the Philippines, a
country that continues to rely on cash and offline transactions.
Originally published on Travel Daily Media on 12 February 2018.