Do you want to explore?
Learn the secrets of honey production in a hive and try it later thanks to a family of beekeepers. Explore the charms of the Sierra de Guadarrama with a hiking guide. Discover the traditional Madrid from the hand of a philosopher who loves history.
These are some of the thirty experiences with which Airbnb Trips, a platform that allows the local population propose activities to tourists, has just been released in Madrid.
The service, with which the vacation home rental giant has expanded its field of action, was already available in 35 destinations around the globe , including Barcelona. 130 hosts offer experiences in Barcelona , where, according to the company itself, the largest number of weekly reservations in the world are concentrated.
It was precisely in the Catalan capital where an adventurous entrepreneur created the Spanish forerunner of the Experiences search engine which is part of Airbnb Trips. In 2012 was born trip4real with the aim that travelers had the opportunity to get to know the destinations through various activities organized by their own inhabitants, which provided a different perspective of their city. The Spanish marketplace attracted the tourist apartment rental giant: Airbnb acquired the company a few months ago .
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TRAVELER, ENTREPRENEUR AND MANAGER IN AIRBNB
A website where you can meet for coffee with someone who tells you what to do in their city. Gloria Molins was touring Southeast Asia when he started creating a page with that goal ). She called it Trip4real, the name of your travel blog . Not surprisingly, Molins had loved discovering new places for years.
For work reasons or for pleasure, this Barcelonan who studied Tourism and Advertising and Public Relations she has traveled the five continents , moving to Amsterdam, Chicago or India. In fact, before mounting trip4real , she worked for a year in Sydney as Head of Marketing and Sales from a company that sold Google products. And from all her adventures she drew a conclusion: she had not lived the most authentic and unforgettable experiences thanks to the guides, but to the people she had met in those places.
So her inspiration caught Molins traveling . In addition to her experiences, the success of Airbnb also helped shape her startup. "I told myself: if this can be done with accommodation, it would be amazing to do it with local experiences as well when you travel”, detailed the CEO of Trip4real at the time.
Are you a traveler or tourist?
The Catalan company began to offer original alternatives to tourists in Spain, from a tour of the most underground parties in Barcelona with a local DJ to a walk through La Pedriza or a private tapas tour of Madrid , according to the proposals of the residents who devised a unique experience for travelers to get to know their city.
In eight months and with six workers, the collaborative experiences company had 5,000 users willing to pay for these activities, from which Trip4real took a commission. The idea conquered Ferrán Adrià himself , who praised Molins because her project allowed the city will tell “its micro-stories” and he became one of the first investors.
The following year, the company closed a financing round of one million euros led by the Spanish venture capital firm Kibo Ventures and by Caixa Capital Risk . In 2015, it was raising €1.4 million to continue its global expansion.
The idea of a lover of traveling the world was thus transformed into a company that **offered 3,000 experiences in some 70 cities** for its more than 40,000 users. That was its situation when, in September of last year, the giant Airbnb, with which it had already signed a collaboration agreement, decided to buy it for a figure that has not been made official, although it is estimated that ranged between 5 and 10 million euros .
FROM A HOLIDAY RENTAL PLATFORM TO A COMPLETE TRAVEL AGENCY
Just a couple of months after buying trip4real , Brian Chesky, the CEO of Airbnb, announced the launch of Trips, a program created with the mission of bringing together “where you stay, what you do and the people you meet in one place”.
Chesky made it clear that with this platform, on which he had been working for two years, Airbnb was no longer an app in which we can find accommodation (a service not without controversy), to become a complete online travel agency where we can also plan our leisure time.
The Trip4real website has closed down, but its founder, Gloria Molins, has taken on the task of leading Trips in the **EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) ** region. Since its launch in 12 cities, the division has not stopped growing. In Spain, upon arrival first in Barcelona and recently in Madrid, Seville will be added, scheduled for the end of the year.
Learn the dance moves from a London star, immortalize Nairobi's natural wonders with the help of a local photographer, or learn to wield a sword like a samurai from Kill Bill's choreographer. These are some of the 2,500 experiences that we can now book , run by individuals, tour guides and travel agencies.
From the company, valued at 31,000 million% C3% B3 dollars (almost 26,000 million euros), they have indicated that, judging by the first data, the Trips business could even exceed the accommodations in the future.
So it seems clear that Airbnb's plan for the inhabitants of a place to offer alternative plans to tourists, an idea that already occurred to a Spanish entrepreneur who now occupies a position of responsibility in the company, is one of its great bets so that, little by little, we organize our trips without having to leave your app.