Travel is changing and it is changing fast. Just over the past few years, we have come a long way. From booking with our friendly cab provider in advance to calling an Uber to go to airport, from walking into a hotel hoping for rooms to booking at last minute using an app, from queuing up at airport to using mobile for check-in, things are changing rapidly and we have adopted the changes very well despite some initial reluctance.

Now a startup is trying to change another travel habit of ours. Most of us go on a trip, enjoy the experience and a few weeks later, pretty much forget everything barring the fact that we had fun. We share the stories with our friends and colleagues but the details are lost in Google searching the name of that one place which we really loved during the trip. Some travellers like me use an app like Color Note to save the details while on the go but that is a rather clumsy way of doing things.

Many apps allow you to avoid either of the two approaches and give you the option to feed in your trip details once you are back. While the idea is good, most people would choose to filter and edit photos for their Instagram instead of uploading all the details on a new platform. Why? Because we need gratification and that comes from friends on social networks. TraveLibro takes a clever approach here and smartly eliminates the need of keying in the details after the trip. Instead, it keeps recording your trip when you are travelling while adding an element of social media into the equation.

Former investment banker Monish Shah perceived a gap in the market while researching destinations for his own honeymoon and joined hands with serial entrepreneur Malhar Gala to build TraveLibro.

‘Libro’ is a Spanish word that translates to ‘book’, only in this case, the book writes itself and is ready for you and your friends to cherish right after the trip. While the feature can be used to record your solo adventures, it can accommodate your friends as well while on the go. As you travel with your friends, it will make a collaborative timeline which will be shared until you are travelling together and record separately when you decide to leave the lazy one at the hotel. Each one of the travellers can contribute to the timeline with photos they shoot at the destination. And with all your trips, you can also showcase a list of countries you have visited and the ones that are on your list. Doesn’t hurt to brag a bit, does it?

The recorded trips can be shared with friends and family who want to know about your journey. This is much easier and more detailed than the scattered photos shared on social media or dumped into a folder to be filtered later.

What works as a travel diary for you, works as a trip planner for someone else in your network. The recorded trips can be used by others to serve as the base plan for building upon by someone else. Whenever I plan to travel, I call my friends who have been in that direction to share whatever they remember of their itinerary and then I fine tune the plan. TraveLibro tries to do that only, albeit in a simpler manner. However, you can’t always count on your friends to make a sensible plan or even have one to share in the first place. That is why it also features a good number of reference itineraries created by experts for you to build upon.

The first time we came to know about TraveLibro, we were slightly disappointed to not find the direct booking option. It always had the option to send an enquiry to one of the many travel agents on the platform but many of us prefer to make individual bookings. Now they have integrated with multiple partners like flight metasearch Skyscanner or activity booking platform Viator to facilitate direct bookings from the website. A partership with Agoda is also in pipeline for hotel booking. This new development could possibly make it a strong player in this highly competitive space and with a large number of popular and not-so-popular destinations covered, it is likely to hold relevance for most of your trips.

Another reason we are so interested in TraveLibro is because it could serve as a new channel for travel bloggers. There are many platforms the bloggers use to engage with their audience and TraveLibro, with the strong focus on being a travel social network, could give them another way to do so. In fact, some of the top travel bloggers like Paul Johnson from ‘A luxury travel blog’, Bruised Passports and Nisha Jha are already using the platform to record their trips and share with their community. They often receive queries from travellers about places to visit or restaurants to try. Travellers can read about the experiences in detail on the blogs and browse through the detailed itinerary on TraveLibro. It would be interesting to see how going forward, we see more people explore the possibilities with this platform.

Website | iOS App | Android App

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We get inspired to travel from our friends, from people who have explored and experienced. Most of the times, we come across some picture of a beautiful destination or notice the check in of a friend, we go to Google to look up more details, we try to see what all can be done at the destination, try to figure out the number of days required to explore, discuss the idea with some friends and then eventually put together an itinerary and start booking. Some people choose to use search phrases like ‘Turkey tour packages’ and book the first thing in sight but they aren’t really the travellers in question here.

The process from inspiration to experience could take anywhere from few days to a couple of months but it usually goes this way. After we travel, we share the experience over social platforms which will start the chain for someone else. But then the Facebook account isn’t a travel diary. Apart from the photographs and travel tales, there is a lot more content fighting for our attention and this is where TraveLibro enters the picture. Very neatly, it brings together travel and social in one place.

Monish Shah and Malhar Gala, Founders, TraveLibro

TraveLibro was started by Monish Shah, a travel aficionado and a former investment banker and Malhar Gala, a serial entrepreneur. The idea of starting TraveLibro germinated when Monish perceived a gap in travel market while researching destinations for his own honeymoon. The core team comprises of people from diverse backgrounds and the whole team is made up of over 50 individuals working to realise a common vision.

TraveLibro allows travellers to connect with their friends, fellow travellers and travel service providers. They can share their experiences, see where their friends have been travelling, look up details of destinations, find local attractions to explore and start putting together an itinerary. It offers a pre plan option where one can plan details of the trip in advance. And after this, it can also connect to the right agent who can put things in place for the trip.

One can simply sign up using Facebook or Twitter account and start using the platform. There are thousands of itineraries spread across various destinations all over that you can browse for inspiration. The itineraries are tagged in different categories like budget, business, religious, luxury and more making it easier to differentiate and find the right one. These itineraries are created by their team of travel experts, travel agents and other travellers.

However this isn’t the key highlight of TraveLibro. TraveLibro stands for ‘Travel Book’ and that is exactly what its mobile app doubles up as. The app offers an ‘On the go’ feature which creates a timeline of your trip when you are on the go. This way you can save your memories in a neat, organised manner without having to keep a separate record of bits. When you are travelling with friends, they can be tagged in the timeline and the end result will be a beautiful collaborative timeline that will let you revisit your destination once you are back.

While TraveLibro offers plenty for discovery and planning stage of travel, it misses out on the option to book. However Monish has assured us that while we are recording our trips on the app, the TraveLibro team is gearing up to introduce the booking feature. Expect the feature to be rolled out in the coming months. You can find more details about TraveLibro here. The app is available for iOS and Android.

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