Here’s how to keep traveling even if you can’t.
I want to talk about going remote. Needless to say, Covid19 has made everyone around the globe stay at home and try to live some sort of productive life when inside.
How long will this last? And when it’s over will it be completely as if things never happened (SARS like) or will it be more like 9/11 and we have to take off our shoes and empty our water bottles every time we get on a plane?
I work at a startup called Port, where we work on the mission of remote travel. Travel is by far the hardest hit industry by Covid19 and we think the world will not entirely go back to normal and going remote will stay in some shape or form. Physical presence will be challenged and people are trained to live their lives through screens (even more so than they already do). A famous example is Airbnb Online Experiences around doing activities remotely with people around the globe. Or the Faroe Islands’ campaign to remote control a guide.
Travel has two main categories: business and leisure. There are many tools being created to facilitate business going remote (Zoom meetings and online whiteboard tools are doing the heavy lifting), but at Port we feel that there isn’t much created yet to facilitate the leisure part. And if we want to live full lives in a remote post-Covid19 world, it’s important we also have remote solutions for the leisure parts of life.
People who have traveled know that the world has much to offer. Cultures to discover, sights to wow at. At Port, we want to bring the world’s travel experiences, travel activities and tours online and make them accessible to everyone. We do that through live, interactive video call sessions with remote guides around the world. Everyone with an internet connection can join.
There are many ways to discover cultures and wow at sights, but a blog can’t do what a video does and a video can’t do what a live video call does. Imagine friends sending you pictures from a party versus giving you a video call where you can say Hi to everyone. The first one gives you FOMO, the second one gives you a shared experience.
Remote travel is not the same as virtual travel, or online travel. The industry is new and terms are being used interchangeably. To us, virtual travel is not real, it’s simulated or pre-recorded. Think about a 360 video click-through of the Grand Canyon. Remote travel gives you the sense of having traveled, but remotely. Responses from our early users have confirmed this:
“It was like walking in Seoul alongside a friend”
“Feels like I was really walking around in Amsterdam”
“Thank you for letting me have this wonderful tour experience”
For any travel site or blog, you search on Google. For any travel video or film, you search on YouTube or Netflix. For any live video call around the world, you search on Port.
Remote travel is not a substitute to travel. If anything, our mission is to enable more people to travel more often. For those who leisure travel regularly and are curious about the world, Port let’s them have more travel moments by creating a travel experience that doesn’t cost $2000 and a week time off to do so. Instead of that once a year trip to Italy, we want you to experience the streets of Havana on Saturday afternoon and be walking on the Bund in Shanghai on Tuesday evening. Some places are worth a visit, but not worth an entire trip.
For the 85% of the world’s population that never had the chance to travel outside their own country, Port is a great way to enable them to discover new cultures and talk to locals. We think good things happen when more people get to learn about other places and cultures. It helps in getting a better understanding of the world we live in.
Port is a startup based in Singapore working on the challenges of remote travel. Feel free to reach out on philip@theportapp.com
