Often travellers have to wait for long hours in airports to catch flights. They can use airport lounges to rest, relax and refresh. In such a scenario, they mostly realise that airport lounges are either too expensive or don’t provide many amenities as per their needs. LoungeBuddy can prove to be a highly useful travel app then.

(Photo Credit: www.mehongkong.com)

LoungeBuddy enables travellers to discover, book and access airport lounges from around the world. Covering 800+ airports, the app allows users to browse through the airport lounges and view photos, amenities and reviews from LoungeBuddy members. To know more about this interesting travel application we spoke with Brent Griffith – the co-founder and marketing guru of LoungeBuddy. Connecting his love for travel and in-depth knowledge of marketing, Brent Griffith developed the unique travel app with his team.

Can you introduce us to your unique travel app ‘LoungeBuddy’?

LoungeBuddy is your answer to finding a place in the airport to relax, be productive, or just get away from it all. Simply tell us about your trip, and our revolutionary Lounge Access Wizard will show you all the lounges (over 2500 in total) you can access at over 800 of the world’s busiest airports. Get your very own personal lounge tour in seconds – view directions, amenities, and over 40k photos, ratings and reviews from our members.

LoungeBuddy isn’t just for VIP travellers.  With instant bookings, all travellers can purchase access to their very own oasis in a few simple taps, all for around US$30 – $45 — no memberships, elite statuses, or premium credit cards required.  No need to book in advance: buy access in less than 60 seconds when you arrive at the airport. The LoungeBuddy app is currently available on both iOS and Android platforms.

How did you come up with the idea of establishing this startup?

Our co-founder and CEO, Tyler Dikman, has spent a lot of time passing through airports during his 31 years on this earth having flown close to 2 million miles already. As global travellers, all of the founders have experienced first-hand the pain of a multi-hour layover at airport terminals. With one out of six air travellers experiencing a significant flight disruption on their journey and 60 percent of trips having a layover, flying can be a less than pleasant experience. Lounges offer so many amenities to help pass the time, be productive, freshen up and relax. We created LoungeBuddy to provide a resource for people to discover, book and access airport lounges around the world. And for those that aren’t part of the “privileged few” in the front of the plane, LoungeBuddy makes it possible to instantly purchase and access an airport lounge in seconds — all from our App. LoungeBuddy came about as a way to help travellers make the most of idle time at the airport, to help whisk them away from the busy concourse to an oasis with complimentary snacks, drinks, maybe showers, and of course, maximum comfort.

Who are the users of your app?

LoungeBuddy members are air travellers hailing from virtually every country in the world. Roughly 60% of our members currently come from the United States, with members from Commonwealth nations making up the next largest contingents. While it comes as no surprise that a significant number of LoungeBuddy members are frequent travellers, particularly business travellers, a growing number of LoungeBuddy members are also casual travellers interested in finding a place to relax before their flight.

What was your early traction?

Upon launch, the LoungeBuddy app was featured on every country’s Apple App Store homepage under “Best New Apps”. It was also selected by Apple’s editors to appear among 55 other apps in the App Store’s “Designed for iOS 7″ section. Since then, LoungeBuddy has been featured on the front page of the Apple App Store numerous times, and has been featured in several locations within the Travel Category front page, including currently “At The Airport” and “Book With Apple Pay”.

LoungeBuddy has been covered in hundreds of publications, including CNBC’s Squawk on the Street, LA Times, Lifehacker, Vanity Fair, Wired, Entrepreneur Magazine, NY Times, Travel + Leisure, The Globe and Mail, Conde Nast Traveler, Daily Mail, Tnooz, and many more. LoungeBuddy recently surpassed a half-million members.

How are you different from others in the fray?

LoungeBuddy is the only product out there that allows instant lounge bookings on a smartphone in 60 seconds or less. In addition, we are the only single resource for airport lounge information – covering over 2,500 lounges in more than 800 of the busiest airports around the world with our patented Lounge Access Wizard.

What are your future plans?

We have big plans for 2016 and beyond. In the next 6 to 12 months, we will work to broaden our network of instant booking partner lounges and continue to invest in making our Lounge Access Wizard the best tool possible for air travellers to discover their perfect airport oasis.

Try out this exemplary travel app and let us know what you think of it. For more details, you can visit its website here.

Also Read: The Airhook: A unique gadget that offers more legroom during air travel

The post Try LoungeBuddy: An app that helps travellers pass time in style in airport lounge appeared first on TravHQ.

The travel and tourism industry plays a significant role in the economy of Singapore. Last year, this country received 15.1 million international visitors who had spent more on sightseeing, entertainment and gaming. Visitors had shown more interest on longer and mono-destination stays. Being one of the most popular destinations of the world, Singapore has received international awards from Lonely Planet as ‘World’s Top Country to Visit in 2015’, from CNN as ‘Top 10 Destinations to visit in 2015’ and from New York Times as ‘Top 6 out of 52 places to go in 2015.

With the rapidly growing Singaporean tourism industry, many travel startups have come into existence and expanded their footprint in 2015. We have listed a few of them below as a part of our Travel Sprint series:

#1 Very Local Trip

Founded by Maxime Besnier in 2014, Very Local Trip is a unique platform that connects travellers with open minded and enthusiastic locals who are ready to share their knowledge of the city’s local culture and food. It helps the travellers avoid the general tourist spots and experience different places as insiders. Their website lists many activities as per the destinations. The activities include Streetfood trails in Chinatown, Bangkok Urban experience and Sticky Waterfall Trip. Interested travellers can take a look at the descriptions of the activities, check reviews and then book an activity of their choice. If you believe in experiential travelling, do check out its website.

Language: English

#2 Travelog

Launched by Matt Kwa, Jason Yoo, Young-Un Cho and Robinson Park in 2014, Travelog is an insider’s travel magazine. Trippers can use them to know more about the cities they are about to visit, the delicious dishes of different places and recognise the hidden hangouts of the tourist destinations. Although the company started out in Singapore, they do have active presence in regions such as Seoul etc. In-terms of content they cover most of asian countries.

Language: English

#3 Flocations

Founded by Shaw Chian, Florian Cornu and Venkatraman Dhamodaran in 2011, Flocations is an online travel discovery tool that helps the adventurers discover the best travel packages. It aggregates the travel packages from the local agencies of the countries as well. The users have filter options to search the different types of packages based on themes such as adventure, beach and family. Interested travellers can use their wide filter searchability features to book the best travel packages of their choice.

Language: English

#4 TripZilla

Launched by Winnie Tan in 2011, TripZilla is an outbound service for people planning to travel from Singapore planning to other countries. Travellers can find itineraries and packages like group tours and land tours by multiple agencies and compare them against each other to pick suitable ones for themselves. There are innumerable deals for flights, hotels, package tours, cruises as per the destinations. To further attract trippers on its website, it has an online magazine with travel stories.

Language: English

#5 PandaBed

Founded by Lester Kang and James Chua in 2012, PandaBed connects travellers with the property managers of apartments, villas and private residences. Travellers can find an inexpensive rental place to stay by getting in touch with the hospitable and helpful hosts. The website has an interesting ‘PeerMatch’ feature that allows travellers and hosts to get connected with each other on similar preferences like culture and language.

Language: English

#6 BeMyGuest

Launched by Clement Wong and Blanca Menchaca in 2012, BeMyGuest is Asia’s leading provider of tours and activities. The brand has partnered with many individuals and thousands of small-to-medium sized travel businesses to offer travellers a wide variety of travel options from the most popular and mainstream tours to the locally specialised activities. A few interesting activities include: Underwater World with Dolphin Lagoon Experience, Night Safari with Tram and Adventure Core Waterpark. Travellers can easily book tours and activities available at attractive deals.

Language: English

#7 Roammate

Founded by Daniel O’Reilly and Hannah Ryan, Roammate helps solo travellers, couples and groups meet each other for tours, excursions, holidays, day trips and events. The travellers can find people with similar interests based on the compatibility test available on the website. They can even share their travel ideas, plans and costs through this platform.

Language: English

#8 Tripnatics

Launched by Bernard Ang in 2013, Tripnatics was developed to encourage the sharing of holiday experiences. The website allows the avid travellers to view, store and share itineraries. Beyond this, it offers reliable reviews by experienced travellers, a feature for finding like-minded travellers and help from ‘Circle of Trust’ to plan the trips.

Language: English

#9 Bon Appetour

Founded by Rinita Vanjre Ravi, Inez Wihardjo and Giovanni Casinelli in 2012, Bon Appetour connects travellers with local hosts who wish to invite guests over to their homes to join them for a dinner. The travellers will get to cherish a ‘home away from home’ experience and make new friends in the cities they are visiting. It gives an opportunity to host and easily monetise through their cooking skills and learn more about the different cultures of the travellers.

Language: English, Spanish, French and Italian.

#10 42Race

Founded by Zhou Mi and Augustine Chua in this year, 42Race is a one-stop portal for marathon enthusiasts. It simplifies the procedure of finding and registering for marathons, book hotels, plan for the trip’s itineraries by providing travel packages especially made for runners and their family and friends who wish to travel with them. This online travel agency (OTA) targets both Chinese and Singapore outbound marathon travellers.

Language: English

If there are any other travel startup that has grabbed your attention for its excellent performance, do share its name with us.

Also Read: Travel Sprint: Our pick of Japan’s 10 coolest travel startups

and Travel Sprint: Our pick of Hong Kong’s 10 coolest travel startups

The post Our pick of Singapore’s 10 coolest travel startups that stole the limelight in 2015 appeared first on TravHQ.