By Chandra Jacobs
Airports – the word just conjures up so many negative emotions – lines, delays, unhealthy food, and overpriced merchandise. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Airports should be a fun part of the travel journey, not a necessary evil – especially since people spend just as much time in airports as they do on the plane itself.
After years of frustration in airports, Chandra Jacobs, a T-bird alum, realized something was missing. This something is Airports 2.0—the age of the “destination” airport that people enjoy visiting, because it’s built around the customer experience, with Food & Beverage, and Retail concepts that reflect the local culture as well as global passenger taste. As airports are gradually evolving towards this concept, tripchi is building the technology to guide you on the journey to the new “experiential” airport.
Love to travel but hate airports?
That’s why the T-bird startup, tripchi, has built a company around solving this problem, and as such, has also launched a fundraising campaign on Indiegogo (http://bit.ly/tripchiIndie) for our airport mobile app, which needs your help to launch globally. The team’s goal is to help travelers worldwide have better airport experiences – in other words, make airports suck less.
More about the app: tripchi serves up personalized recommendations of things for you to do in the airport, including deals on food, drink, and shopping, and of course detailed content to explore and navigate the airport. Check out all the details, including tripchi’s new animated product video, here: http://bit.ly/tripchiIndie.
tripchi already has built a prototype that works on the iPhone in Boston Logan International Airport, but in order to scale tripchi worldwide (and keep the app free for travelers), the teams needs to raise more money, which will cover the build out of at least 3 airports (that you get to vote for!) and crowd-sourced interesting airport content to include in the app.
If making airports suck less resonates with you, there are two easy ways for you to help:
1. By contributing! Visit the campaign on Indiegogo (http://bit.ly/tripchiIndie) to select the contribution amount and also browse the list of awesome perks tripchi offer at various donation levels that are all related to improving your travel experience.
2. By sharing with others! Even if you can’t make a contribution, you can still help the cause by spreading the word to your social networks, and following tripchi on Twitter (@tripchi) and Facebook (@tripchi).
The tripchi team (below) sends a BIG THANK YOU for all your help and support to revolutionize the airport experience and bring the world into an era of Airports 2.0.