You will find a dozen apps that will let you find and book activities in the region, another half a dozen to find local attractions, even more to find hotels and then some more to recommend restaurants and bars. Most of them find utility at some time or the other while you are travelling, but they take up a spot needlessly for most times. This is where Shouut enters the frame. It brings together local food, attractions, events, shopping, lodging and activities, all stitched together seamlessly in a single app.

The recommendations are divided in five different categories- food and drink, nightlife, shopping, leisure and outdoor and travel and stay. Under each category, you will find three parts- Find, Do and Get. Under ‘Find’ you can find places. Places to eat, places to stay and places to visit. As the name suggests, ‘Do’ features things that you can do near you. It includes events, concerts, plays and activities that you can be part of over the next few days. ‘Get’ includes the nearby deals that you might be interested in. Of course the ‘Find’, ‘Do’ and ‘Get’ hold different meanings for different categories.

While most such services rely on crowdsourcing recommendations and reviews from anyone who is willing to contribute, Shouut only allows specific content creators who already have good knowledge about the topic in question.

“We are building a trusted recommendations platform and for that we need to keep the quality of content high. I don’t think we will take the crowdsourcing route, at least not in the visible future” says Praveer, Founder of Shouut.

At times, the reviews on platforms like Zomato and TripAdvisor can be subjective and might not paint a very clear picture. The contributors on Shouut have blogs with moderate to high following, making them a credible source of information.

Praveer, Founder and CEO, Shouut

Being an avid traveller himself, Praveer would often travel to new destinations and then shuffle through multiple apps and websites to put together a plan on places to visit. That is why he came up with the idea of Shouut.

By default, the recommendations are sorted by distance which can be changed according to your preferences. The results include tags which can be used to filter. You can also choose to manually select the location if you want to see results for the places that you are planning to visit.

We have always emphasised that any travel app or service should be relevant to the travellers for most times to keep them engaged and this is where Shouut takes full points. When asked about the geographies covered, Praveer very confidently asked me to try and find a place in India, however small it may be, for which there aren’t any listings. I am yet to find one.

Apart from listing the upcoming events and activities hosted by others, they are also working with brands like Rolling Stone and Lonely Planet to co-curate activities. This will help them drive more users to the app. The app also uses Bluetooth low energy beacons to drive store level engagement when shopping. For this, they have partnered with major brands like UCB, Croma, Reliance and are constantly adding more to the list.

While Shouut came into existence only a few months back, the app already has more than 25,000 recommendations, over 1500 events and around 300 offers. Giant Tech Labs Pvt Ltd, the company that operates Shouut recently announced a seed funding of $500,000 from an individual angel investor. According to Praveer, these funds will be used in product development and going forward, they will continue to add interesting features to the app.

The app is definitely worth a try, whether you are looking for weekend activities in your city or things to do at a new destination. You can download the Android app or go to www.shouut.com to learn more about it.

The post Shouut is the only app you will need for local discovery appeared first on TravHQ.

Peer-to-peer platforms allow travellers to break out of the envelope and experience the local culture of their destination. They add the personal element to the experience of travel and as more people gain confidence in such services, new P2P platforms are coming up with innovative ideas to cater to travellers. Sam the Local is one startup that is driving the P2P trend in Hong Kong. We spoke with Maggie Lau, Co-Founder of Sam the Local. Here is an excerpt from the conversation:

Tell us a little about yourself and Sam the Local.

We are two Californians who are passionate about all that Hong Kong has to offer. We have been here for four years, and we’re still discovering new things every day!

Maggie Lau and Anita Chan, Founders of Sam the Local

At the beginning of 2015, we launched Sam the Local, a peer-to-peer platform that connects people to Locals for customized, interest-driven activities and experiences in Hong Kong. Each one of our Outings are private, and there are already over 50 Locals on the platform that customers can book. After the booking confirmation with the customer’s chosen Local, the Local will create a customized itinerary with the customer’s specific preferences and interests in mind. That’s why you won’t see any what we call “pre-packaged” and “cookie cutter” experiences on our platform. After finalizing these customized itineraries, the Local will take the customer on it and share their stories and experiences with them along the way for a unique and fully-immersive experience.

So how did it start?

Anita, my co-founder, and I separately moved to Hong Kong at the end of 2011 because of our love for the city’s energy and dynamism. After moving there, we explored different parts of Hong Kong and realized the depth this city has to offer. We wanted to share it with everyone.

Additionally, we had the opportunity to travel around Asia after moving to Hong Kong, and we were always lucky enough to have a local friend show us around in every city we visited. We loved traveling this way because we didn’t have to plan anything, and our local friend would always know the best things to bring us to. Then we thought, “what if you didn’t have a local friend?”

From there, Sam the Local was born.

What segment of travellers are using Sam the Local?

Initially our assumption was that millennial travellers would be our target market, but after running for a little bit we’ve actually learned that it’s people who are between the ages of 30-55 that make up the majority of our bookings. Additionally, we’ve discovered that over half of our bookings came from people living in Hong Kong. For our visiting customers, they’ve mostly been from North America and Europe. For our customers who reside in Hong Kong, they’re mostly from the expatriate community who originate from Europe and Australia.

In addition to serving consumers, we’ve also had quite a few corporate clients that range from MNCs to airlines to 4 and 5-star hotels.

What sort of traction are you getting currently?

On the supply side, we already have over 50 Locals that customers can book on the platform, and our pipeline has over 300 applicants. Because we vet and verify all of our Locals with a two-step screening process to ensure quality, we will be working through this pipeline in the next couple of months.

On the demand side, we ended 2015 with a bang. Our month-on-month revenue growth from November to December was over 320%. The average month-on-month revenue growth for the last three months in 2015 was just under 150% per month.

We’re excited to continue this momentum into 2016.

How is Sam the Local different from other P2P platforms?

We are people-focused – We believe that it’s not just about the destination, but the people that you go with and their stories that really make your experiences unique and memorable. This is why you’ll notice that our platform emphasizes the Locals’ profiles instead of the experiences they can take you on. This is also why there are no cookie cutter, pre-packaged experiences on our platform. Every one of our customers are unique and their experiences should be one-of-a-kind.

All of the Locals on our platform go through a two-step vetting and verification process so that we can ensure the quality of the experience that our customers yet. We strongly believe in quality over quantity.

Another thing we focus on is building a community for our Locals to share their insight and knowledge with one another. After all, one of the biggest cited reasons of why our Locals want to join our platform is to meet other people. We want to foster this and encourage everyone to share their stories.

Lastly, we emphasize on having a large selection of various Locals for our customers to book in all of the cities that we operate in instead of expanding to many cities at once and only having a few Locals to choose from in each city. Again, quality over quantity.

What are your future plans?

In the near future, we are going to focus on growing our B2B side and close our seed round. Our longer term goals are to expand to other cities in Asia and then to the rest of the world.

For more information or to book a unique experience, you can visit www.SamtheLocal.com or check out their Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

The post Sam the Local allows travellers to experience Hong Kong with a local friend appeared first on TravHQ.