LUX Xmas 2018

NEWS A new app which brings together the connected generation of travellers, changing the way millennials travel. For the 300 million millennial travellers set to embark on adventures around the world by 2020, meeting likeminded people to share their adventures is as much a part of the experience as the destinations themselves. According to a new report from the World Tourism Organisation, 75% of millennial travellers now want to make their travel plans on the road, look beyond the confines of package holidays and suggested itineraries, and discover authentic and unique travel experiences. Despite the huge influx of millennial travellers into the world’s most exciting cities, mainstream social media apps still fail to connect people in the same location in a simple, fun way to enable them to meet, split the cost of travel or share experiences in a suitably impromptu way. Now, an innovative new location-based mobile app called Travltalk is connecting millennial explorers, backpackers and AirBnB’rs that roam the world seeking adventure and authentic local experiences. Users simply swipe through ‘cards’ posted by others for inspiration for they would like to do, then the app brings people together to meet, sell and split, to make it happen on the go. The adventure that led to the app… At the age of 19, the founder and CEO of Travltalk, Rhiannon Monks left Australia for the first time. She first travelled to Europe, but was immediately bitten by the travel bug and spent the next 10 years solo backpacking across the world to over 80 countries, staying in more than 300 hostels. Rhiannon’s own travel adventure started when Facebook didn’t yet exist, so the hostel common room was where people met. As time has gone on, Rhiannon has noticed with the rise of AirBnB there were more millennial travellers than ever before, but it was harder to discover where they were. Along her six-month travel in 2013 through Eastern Europe, Russia, Mongolia, China, Myanmar and Japan it became apparent that there was still no popular mobile app for meeting travellers when you arrived in a location. The friendships she made while on her journeys drove her quest to build Travltalk, as she wanted to help as many people as possible meet and share experiences as they move around the world. As well as being a worldwide traveller, Rhiannon has successfully juggled a career in tech and marketing, working with brands including HTC Vive, Intel, Canon, Universal Pictures and Nokia, and managing multi-million pound budgets. Cutting edge app build… Travltalk was built using React Native, a JavaScript code library created by Facebook and Instagram. React Native is fast becoming the leading code library for location and scale-based apps, as demonstrated by the apps for both Uber and AirBnB. Being built in this way not only helps make create a fast and intuitive user experience for travellers, creating a stable, reliable platform that enables users to make plans quickly and easily on the move. Where can you find Travltalk? Travltalk is free and available now on the App Store and Google Play. For more information see www.travltalk.co Travltalk - GoYour OwnWay