Where there is a will there is a way and where there is a need there is an app that might just drive loyalty. Pamela Whitby hears more

Oregon-born Katelyn O’Shaughnessy, a Forbes 30-under-30 candidate in the consumer tech class of 2016, could be on to something. After a few years working as travel agent in the luxury space she quickly realised that despite the growing trend towards online booking, there was no online service that allowed her to connect with her clients efficiently.

Says O’Shaughnessy: “I got fed up with copying and pasting all the different reservation confirmations for my clients.” 

What she needed was an itinerary aggregator that pulled various reservation details that would enable her to push out itineraries but within a mobile app.

The first step was to borrow $5,000 from her grandmother and head south to a hackathon in Los Angeles. Here she connected with co-founder and chief technology officer Hiron Menon and TripScope, the travel app that puts a real-life ‘travel agent in your pocket’ was born.

Soon snapped up by Amplify, an LA-based accelerator programme, TripScope has received strategic and financial backing coming from industry leaders like Erik Blachford, former CEO of Expedia.

O’Shaugnessy believes the app, which takes a $25 fee per booking, is set to capitalise on what she believes will be the three biggest trends of 2016

• The resurrection of travel agents into a new breed that works online to deliver their services

• Virtual reality

• The sharing economy

How it works

TripScope, which takes a $25 fee per transaction, uses live travel agents to deliver real-time itineraries directly to a user’s phone. However, unlike many travel-planning apps, that start life with a consumer focus but then shift to B2B, TripScope has turned that model on its head. Quite simply because it fulfilled a need – the dearth of tools available for agents that could assist them in the itinerary creation process.

In essence, it’s a platform that brings the bricks & mortar travel agent online, enabling them to deliver interactive travel planning and world-class traveller support using video chat, screen share and direct booking integrations.

“These provide a new path to profit for agents to connect, engage and service today’s traveller,” O’Shaugnessy says.

The business model works like this: travel agents pay a monthly subscription and consumers pay a planning fee that is matched with travel specialists.

One of the growing opportunities for Tripscope is the ‘mobile concierge’, which is actively being used by millennials while they are on the road.  Again it’s about fulfilling a need and doing something differently. “Having a travel agent in your pocket to give you recommendations on the go provides a new level of service that many young travellers have never experienced before,” O’Shaughnessy says.

Engagement issues

User engagement is a major issue for travel apps but O’Shaugnessy believes there are two things that will help this one stick.

• Agents use TripScope for all of their client’s itineraries because it saves them hours of time creating both paper and mobile itineraries from scratch

• Users rely on TripScope to communicate all their travel needs with a specialist. Whether in the dream, shopping, booking, experiencing or reflecting phase, users keep coming back to TripScope to share thoughts with their agent

O’Shaughnessy is ambitious. In 2016, she wants to win this offline-to-online race, scale internationally and change people’s perception of travel agents. It’s about giving the online travel world a human face, something that is often frustratingly absent for users trying to find the very best deal for them.

Katelyn O’Shaughnessy will be speaking in Miami at Online Marketing Strategies for Travel 2016: The Americas and Caribbean May 17-18