Backdrop, A Game-Changing Travel App, Is Now Available

If there aren’t any beautiful, envy-inducing pictures to prove you went on a holiday, did it really happen?

Eniola Williams certainly didn’t think so back in 2019, when she reached out to her friend, Timi Ajiboye, with a solution to this inconvenience she often faced on her trips. Timi loved her idea — an app to find pretty places to take pictures — and came up with a name that stuck: Backdrop.

Coming up with a catchy name is one thing, but Timi knew he couldn’t build the app by himself, so he reached out to two of the smartest women he knows: Damilola Odufuwa and Odunayo Eweniyi. As lovers of travel (and picturesque places) themselves, it wasn’t hard to sell them the Backdrop dream.

What exactly is this dream?

It’s pretty simple: Make Backdrop the go-to travel companion and travel discovery app for people who are as adventurous and curious about the world as our co-founders. And in a broader, more ambitious sense, the dream is to fundamentally change how people discover the beauty of the world.

You could call the former our mission, and the latter our vision.

How is Backdrop going to do this?

There’s currently no go-to app dedicated to finding pretty places. While you can stumble upon these places on other apps, they aren’t built primarily for travel discovery. They have a bunch of bells and whistles that end up serving as barriers in the way of the traveller, photographer, influencer or everyday user specifically searching for gorgeous places to take pictures (or simply chill).

This is where Backdrop comes in. Our niche is prioritising and hyper-focusing on these picturesque places. At any given time, your Backdrop feed, which you can customise to suit your tastes, offers a steady stream of stunning spots from all around the world. We even curate and aggregate all the necessary information about said places, answering questions like, “Is that restaurant pet-friendly?” “What time does that bar open?” and “How expensive is that boutique hotel?”

So, not only can users easily find thousands of backdrops based on their desired aesthetics — minimalist, rustic, vintage and more — but they can also immediately find all the key details about the backdrop without having to leave the app. This is especially great for content creators, who usually have to spend hours finding the perfect place to create — from the colours to the architectural design, to ease of entry.

The evolution of the idea

We’ve worked on Backdrop passionately and tirelessly since February 2020, assembling a team of young and talented iOS and backend developers, product designers, project managers and photo researchers to bring our vision to life (while also evolving it).

Now, Backdrop isn’t just for travellers and content creators; it’s for anyone with a sense of adventure. We can all see how the pandemic has fundamentally altered the way people navigate the world. A lot of exploring is now more domestic and regional, and people want to find beautiful spaces in the communities they live in.

Expanding the original idea beyond finding pretty places when on vacation, anyone can use Backdrop to find places worth visiting just minutes away from them — and we’ll even show you how to get there. The feature is called “Backdrops Near You,” and it’s an in-house fave. You can also add your own backdrops and review backdrops uploaded by other users to ensure quality and earn redeemable points.

Building not just an app but a community

Beyond creating an app we truly love, one that helps you plan your experience before you even leave your home, or, for the travellers, your hotel, we are also passionate about growing a community of like-minded individuals.

If this sounds like a community you’d like to be a part of, then you need to know our core values.

• Openness. Transparency and proactiveness with how we communicate with our community.
• Creativity. Showing the beauty in the world. We are all about high-quality, aesthetically pleasing spaces.
• Integrity. Giving credit to the photographers/influencers, as well as always providing accurate information about the backdrops.
• Innovation. Constantly building and upgrading Backdrop to make it the best and most efficient app for travel discovery.

Now, it’s time to download the app on your iPhone.