While on a visit to Barcelona in December I had the chance to meet up with Gloria Molins, founder of trip4real, and learn about her vision for a business that connects travelers with locals for authentic and meaningful experiences. Just three years old, this company has emerged as the second largest in the space, with more than 5000 experiences in Europe across 10 cities. While I put trip4real in the category of peer-to-peer activity guides, from this interview it is clear that Molins sees her company as much more than that. By connecting people across cultures and regions of the world, Trip4Real is hoping to impact not just travel but also humanity as a whole.
ShareTraveler: What was your inspiration for trip4real?
Gloria Molins: I think traveling is about people, not places. I’ve lived and traveled all around the world and I really think that moment of a trip that changes you is when you connect with a local person. I think seeing Barcelona with someone from here can really change you in ways that going by yourself to see Sagrada Familia never can. So I decided to just connect travelers with locals through sharing experiences.
ST: How do you handle the challenge of finding listings that are unique peer-to-peer experiences rather than commercial tour companies who would like to take advantage of the opportunity to advertise on your website?
Molins: We have specific guidelines for the tours. When they are commercial they need to be authentic and very small, really Trip4Real, as we say. Maybe it’s a guide who has a vintage shop and knows all about bikes and that’s a peer to peer guide. But if it’s a guy who has 3000 bikes and does 100 person tours, that’s not peer to peer. Over the last 4 months we’ve been cleaning up our website to remove the commercial listings.
We have a quality process, and we have a validation team, but in the end the best validation we have is customers; the most important feedback is from customers.
ST: Where do you see peer-to-peer tours going in the next five years?
Molins: I don’t think I’m in the peer to peer tours and activities business. We are a company that wants to improve travel experiences by connecting with people who can change the experience. I think there’s a lot to explore in the traveler journey. We all want to be insiders when we’re traveling. I’m more aligned with that vision and concept than with tours and activities.
ST: What is the biggest challenge trip4real faces?
Molins: I’m obsessed with how to make travelers have a memorable experience and really change their trips. I’m a traveler myself and I’m super passionate. It’s amazing when you experience something like this. Traveling makes us more creative and I think it makes a better world. If you can see the place like this, getting inside, meeting the culture, I think that makes a positive impact in our world. Once you do this you respect everyone a lot more. That’s my mission. I believe you don’t really discover a place until you know its people.
The travel industry is huge and a lot of people are making a lot of money but I want to also create a positive impact. Travel is growing and growing and we need to be aware of the negative impact it can have. Traveling with trip4real it’s possible to really connect with a place and make a positive impact and have a better world.
So my challenge is, how do I make it possible for more and more people to discover my site and how do I make sure that those people really have an experience that is amazing. We’re getting there. Right now our average reviews are 5 out of 5. When they do the tours they say “I loved it.” It allows them to really connect with people.
I think part of the success of trip4real is that we’ve been able to do a lot of things to lift quality and have a slow but organic growth, improving one thing at a time without being super aggressive. Now a market that started for us three years ago is a market that everyone knows about, and we are leaders in Europe and the second biggest in the world.
ST: Where do you hope to expand to next?
Molins: We plan to continue to expand in Europe. We have the leadership in Europe. But on the other hand we also want to look at Latin America. It makes sense for us to move there but the model should change a little bit to address security issues and maybe be more curated.
Molins: I love our urban experiences like the graffiti tour we have in Amsterdam and this street art tour of Paris. I also really like to meet our community of photographers! It’s such a cool thing to meet up with a local photographer who will take you to see the best views of a city. Francisco has a cool photo tour you can book in Barcelona and he’ll even throw in a photography lesson!