Big Ideas: “I thought instead of going around catching Pokémon, why not go and discover the world?” — Mark Yeo

Mark Yeo, alongside his two co-founders, is revolutionizing the travel industry. They have created ExplorR, an augmented reality app reminiscent of Pokémon Go, which gives travellers the chance to earn points as they sightsee and discover hidden beauties. These points can then be exchanged for exclusive titles and real-world discounts. I find out more.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you share with us the story of how you met and why you decided to collaborate?

Our first two co-founders had a common desire to fundamentally change the way we travel. Cultures and paths crossed when Alessandro Cholet, a French-Italian, and Chinese-born Jingwu Shang met each other on a summer course at business school. Alessandro had always been excited by China’s rich culture and wanted to experience the country like a local, but Jingwu recognised the difficulty for foreigners to do this without someone local showing them around. It’s made worse by the fact that traditional tour agencies are known to be massively commercialised and do not showcase the authentic heritage of China.

Then I met Alessandro and Jingwu, joining the venture as the third co-founder and introducing the idea of discovering unique places through a 3D location-based game. This eliminated the need for a local tour guide as users could independently craft a journey like an explorer. It also adds the excitement of spontaneous discovery — rather than being told where to go by a human or digital guide! The three of us soon agreed upon the concept and the venture really kicked off when our friend Andy Li joined the team as the fourth co-founder who was responsible for converting our idea into a functioning prototype.

Did you have any prior experience in augmented reality?

We’ve studied the augmented reality (AR) space as much as we can because many digital travel offerings fall into this category. To better understand the technology, I even attempted to create simple AR functions using Vuforia, the leading development tool for AR applications. Our Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Andy has also studied the realm of AR and location-based apps in his thesis for his Master’s in Game Design. In the end, we have not ruled out including AR in ExplorR in the future, but at this stage we feel that 3D location-based technology coupled with gamification elements is the most appropriate approach to creating a new exploration experience.

How did you come up with the idea for ExplorR?

I play a lot of Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) and have always been fascinated by the exploration of virtual worlds. Games such as Guild Wars 2 and World of Warcraft have stunning environments and, role-playing as an adventurer, I find myself spending hours exploring the vast open world that a game has to offer. The experience of uncovering previously undiscovered areas is thrilling and I wanted to bring that experience into real-world travelling. These coincided nicely with the initial success of Pokemon GO and rising popularity of location-based games. I thought instead of going around catching Pokémon, why not go around and discover points of interests? It dawned on me that location-based technology allows our real selves to physically explore the real world, mimicking the experience that I love when playing MMORPG games.

Our CTO took this idea further by introducing a memoir system. As users discover new places, they can see memoirs left behind by other ‘explorers’ who have previously discovered the place and leave behind their own memoirs. This feature is game-changing in two ways: 1) It enhances the exploration experience as one would be more curious to physically walk towards undiscovered points of interest with a speech bubble on top in our app interface, 2) It allows us to create a community of explorers as everyone can leave and share unique memories with other fellow explorers at every point of interest — think of Christopher Columbus leaving his mark at a new island he just discovered! This User Generated Content (UGC) model allows ExplorR to become scalable and highly engaging.

What’s the core mission of ExplorR?

The current lack of spontaneity is making exploration dull and unsustainable. People are seeking new ways to explore and discover. Our mission is to meet these needs by bringing back the spontaneity of exploration through the use of 3D location-based technology and gamification.

Do you think traditional tour agencies are becoming outdated?

I believe many ‘traditional tour agencies’ recognise the need to use technology to suit the evolving needs of the modern traveller. However, we find that tour agencies are misunderstanding today’s traveller. While there are many cutting-edge technology solutions available for the industry, the problem does not lie in the lack of utilization by travel agencies of these tools. Instead, the problem lies in using these tools to offer the same old travelling experience to customers. Take the example of AR and Virtual Reality (VR): While AR and VR offer novel experiences, travel companies have utilized them mainly for marketing purposes to trigger emotive responses and encourage potential customers to take up their ‘outdated’ travel product offering. Internet of Things and Big Data are another two technology fads commonly talked about in the travel industry, yet so far they have only served to personalize travel and reduce travelling frictions. Travel offerings remain largely the same.

It’s clever that you can exchange your points for real-world discounts — how does this work?

Users earn in-game currencies by unlocking location cards and leaving memories at the places they’ve discovered. The amount of in-game currencies they earn is based on the popularity of their memoirs at each location. As we want to facilitate the formation of UGC, we designed our reward system to incentivise them to create content for our app by leaving memories.

We were very lucky to come across PointVoucher through their crowdfunding campaign, who already have software built for developing apps like ExplorR that allows users to spend their in-game currencies in a voucher marketplace. As such, we did not have to invest too much time and resource into building our own discount management system or developing a network of brands and discount providers. PointVoucher works with voucher platforms and brands across EMEA, UK and US to provide vouchers from 2for1 deals to gift cards, free products and prize draws. The software is also highly flexible so we’re able to add our own network of vendors into the voucher platform in the future.

What kinds of places does the app encourage tourists to visit?

We don’t try to encourage tourists to visit certain places — that would be against our vision of spontaneous discovery and exploration. Nudging users to visit certain types of places would destroy the spontaneity and make us no different from existing travel guides and apps. To ExplorR, every discovery is a unique experience — there are no right or wrong places to visit.

Have you faced any challenges so far?

Like most technology companies, balancing speed, quality and cost in the development project is the biggest and ongoing challenge. We had to release our app into the market as soon as possible to get customer feedback and validation, deliver it at reasonable quality (without frequent crashes), and within budget constraints. Optimising the trade-off between these three goals have proven to be highly difficult.

Another challenge we faced is gathering our initial user traction starting with no users! Here, a lot of hustling is required and we’re in the midst of directly reaching out to potential target users through platforms like meetup.com. Building our initial user base is our short- and medium-term priority.

What kind of support and advice did you receive during your time in the accelerator programme at King’s Business School?

We have access to experienced mentors that have given advice on Growth Hacking, Market Validation, and Pitching Techniques. Furthermore, we worked with an accounting firm — a partner of King’s Entrepreneurship Institute — that helped us establish an accounting system and handle our business administration matters for free during the course of the accelerator program. Most importantly, the Kings20 community has been supportive in sharing their struggles and expertise and has made our entrepreneurial journey a much less stressful one.

Thanks so much!