Traveling Alone? New App Tripr Will Help You Find Some Company

If you don’t use a dating app yet, you could soon be in the minority. While the leaders of the smartphone romance game — Grindr for gay men and Tindr for all sexual orientations — are now estimated to be hooking up millions of people a week, there is a large hole left in the market for people looking for another type of relationship in their life — travel companions.

A new app called Tripr seeks to solve just that problem. For many younger travelers, meeting fellow globetrotters is simple: hostels offer a communal environment for a low price that is filled with other international travelers looking for the same experience. A lack of privacy, however, makes the option much less appealing as travelers age; even though for a certain target age group, cruises and other full-package experiences where socializing is on the menu are still out of reach.

Tripr App from Nick Green on Vimeo.

The desire to fraternize with other people who are just as new in town as you, however, stays. This is where Tripr comes in. “People, not places, make the trip” is the app’s motto, and with more people traveling alone than ever before, one more way to meet people can’t hurt. The New York Times described the app as a very Facebook-integrated medium.

“After entering their dates of travel, they can search for others who have crossover dates in that destination, and basic preferences can be set to search for a specific type of person to connect with, whether that’s a 20-something American male with whom to hike Machu Picchu, or a more mature Roman local who might know the city’s best trattorias.”

The Facebook association also some other useful benefits, much like those that Tindr found when they began crossing over the social media network and their own dating app. People are much more trusting of someone if they might know another mutual friend, says Tripr’s chief executive Nicholas Green.

“We chose to use Facebook for a few reasons. First, it makes the initial sign-up significantly quicker; it also provides a degree of authentication that we would not be able to offer at this stage; and we are able to show how people are connected via different degrees of separation.”

While Tripr is really just taking a page from dozens of other apps that are trying to take the dating out of Tindr and Grindr and make them friend-finding apps, its choice to make the focus on travel is at the very least interesting.

“Our users are connected in terms of where they will be rather than in terms of where they currently are.”

Would you meet up with someone from Tripr on your next vacation?

[Image via Flickr]