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Japanese travel startup Trippiece launches English version and a Singapore subsidiary

Masaru Ikeda Masaru Ikeda
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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based travel startup Trippiece announced today that it has launched an English version to assist international travelers visiting Japan. Since its launch back in 2011, it has been serving Japanese users. Now with the launch of this English version the company hopes to establish a global user base. Prior to launch, they established a subsidiary in Singapore, hiring Shuying Yao as overseas marketing manager. She will be committed to user engagement and marketing in Asian regions. They currently have no plan to serve languages other than English. Trippiece allows you to create a travel plan and gather others who are keen to join. There is a troublesome chicken/egg issue when you launch on a web service of this kind. That is, if there are no travel plans on the platform, you cannot invite more users. And without users, you cannot have travel plans. The company’s founder and CEO Ian Ishida has learned a lot about this issue, having experienced it when they launched the original Japanese version. He explained how they will try to avoid it this time around: To ensure the quality of the travel plans we provide, we will ask selected foreigners…

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See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based travel startup Trippiece announced today that it has launched an English version to assist international travelers visiting Japan. Since its launch back in 2011, it has been serving Japanese users. Now with the launch of this English version the company hopes to establish a global user base.

Shuying-Yao
Singapore-based marketing manager Shuying Yao

Prior to launch, they established a subsidiary in Singapore, hiring Shuying Yao as overseas marketing manager. She will be committed to user engagement and marketing in Asian regions. They currently have no plan to serve languages other than English.

Trippiece allows you to create a travel plan and gather others who are keen to join. There is a troublesome chicken/egg issue when you launch on a web service of this kind. That is, if there are no travel plans on the platform, you cannot invite more users. And without users, you cannot have travel plans. The company’s founder and CEO Ian Ishida has learned a lot about this issue, having experienced it when they launched the original Japanese version. He explained how they will try to avoid it this time around:

To ensure the quality of the travel plans we provide, we will ask selected foreigners living in Japan to create their travel plans. If they can lead a tour, other foreign visitors will not need to worry about a language issue when taking that tour.

But if we depend only on our users’ efforts in having a solid collection of travel plans, we won’t be able to form a community of users. So we will make about 30 travel plans by the launch of the English edition. We’re not interested in how many international users we can acquire, but we aim to have 1,000 users traveling to Japan using our website six months from now.

In this space, we’ve also seen many competitors like Asoview, Voyagin, PlayLife, and Trip. Trippiece has a relatively long history, but how can they stand out from the others? Ishida explained:

Our uniqueness is that we create an opportunity for experience. A travel plan will be executed just once, in contrast with other services which usually sell their tours or plans multiple times. What we do is help users establish a social graph through travel, rather than just helping them travel.

Consequently, some of their users have voluntarily organized a club for diving lovers, for example. Others could find boyfriends and girlfriends through a tour they have attended.

In Japan, central and local governments have been committed to cultivating the so called MICE (meetings, incentives, conferencing, exhibitions) market needs, with the aim of surpassing 20 million international travelers annually to Japan heading towards the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. With that in mind, Trippiece plans to acquire over 10,000 users who will use the website and visit Japan a year from now.

Related news

  1. User-generated travel plan startup Trippiece raises $2M
  2. Tokyo Office Tour: Trippiece wants you to travel differently
  3. asoview-trippiece-wide CNet Japan Startup Award nominees: Travel startups Asoview and Trippiece

CNet Japan Startup Award nominees: Travel startups Asoview and Trippiece

Mona Nomura Mona Nomura
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This is part four of our CNET Japan Startup Awards nominee rundown. The rest can be found here. In the past few years, there has been a surge of travel startups in the US. Trippiece and Asoview are looking to disrupt the archaic and monopolized industry in Japan. Trippiece is the most similar service to Gogobot in Japan. Gogobot, as many of you know, is the most visited travel startup in the US, beating out AirBnB and Hipmunk in uniques so far in 2013. Where Gogobot solely relies on social graphs for trip itineraries, Trippiece highlights all user-generated content and is planning to take it one step further than Gogobot by securing partnerships with major travel agencies [1]. Launched in March of 2011, the company has so far acquired more than 50,000 users. But the CEO admits they have a long way to go to meet milestones on their roadmap. They have a repeat user rate of 30% to 40%, and with over 60% of their overall users accessing their site through mobile, they are meeting the needs of Japanese travelers. Japanese internet user behavior is rapidly shifting and consumers are now more mobile than ever before with analysts predicting…

asoview-trippiece-wide

This is part four of our CNET Japan Startup Awards nominee rundown. The rest can be found here.

In the past few years, there has been a surge of travel startups in the US. Trippiece and Asoview are looking to disrupt the archaic and monopolized industry in Japan.

trippiece
Trippiece

Trippiece is the most similar service to Gogobot in Japan. Gogobot, as many of you know, is the most visited travel startup in the US, beating out AirBnB and Hipmunk in uniques so far in 2013.

Where Gogobot solely relies on social graphs for trip itineraries, Trippiece highlights all user-generated content and is planning to take it one step further than Gogobot by securing partnerships with major travel agencies [1].

Launched in March of 2011, the company has so far acquired more than 50,000 users. But the CEO admits they have a long way to go to meet milestones on their roadmap. They have a repeat user rate of 30% to 40%, and with over 60% of their overall users accessing their site through mobile, they are meeting the needs of Japanese travelers.

Japanese internet user behavior is rapidly shifting and consumers are now more mobile than ever before with analysts predicting that by 2014, 60.2% of users will switch to smartphones. That’s almost a 150% rate of change since 2011. Trippiece, whose users are mainly mobile, is ahead of the game.

Asoview resembles the early days of Zozi, an adventure experience site. Asoview has over 460 partnerships, securing its biggest one thus far in Yahoo Travel. They are looking to fill the niche of unconventional travel activities such as skydiving and ice climbing, or also more mellow experiences like swimming with dolphins. Regrettably, there is no available information on profitability or user base right now for Asoview that we can pass on, but we’ll update you if we learn more.

We wish both Trippiece and Asoview the best of luck at the Cnet Japan Startup Awards on Tuesday!

Asoview
Asoview

  1. Includes JTB and other unnamed agencies. See CNet Japan, e27 for more information.  ↩

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Tokyo Office Tour: Trippiece wants you to travel differently

Masaru Ikeda Masaru Ikeda
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Trippiece is a Tokyo-based startup that allows you to create your travel plan and then gather friends who might be likely to take the same trip. Our readers may recall the company recently fundraised $200 million yen ($2 million) from Silicon Valley-based investment firm Draper Nexus. This followed previous seed investments from Japanese internet marketing agency Opt and incubation company Movida Japan back in 2012. We heard that they recently relocated, so we visited them at their new office in Shibuya. We spoke to founder and CEO Ian Ishida and CFO Fumiaki Koizumi [1] about how they will enhance their business using these latest funds. Ishida unveiled that the company will launch its first overseas office in Singapore next February, intensifying their global marketing efforts: We currently talking to a person in Singapore, and we’ll be launching an office there early next year, naming her as its head. The new office will be located in the heart of the Asian region, which will encourage more Asian people to travel to Japan using our service. In contrast to other travel services like Meetrip or Voyagin [2], our service advises you to visit a destination you’ve never visited, instead of presenting local…

Trippiece is a Tokyo-based startup that allows you to create your travel plan and then gather friends who might be likely to take the same trip. Our readers may recall the company recently fundraised $200 million yen ($2 million) from Silicon Valley-based investment firm Draper Nexus. This followed previous seed investments from Japanese internet marketing agency Opt and incubation company Movida Japan back in 2012.

We heard that they recently relocated, so we visited them at their new office in Shibuya. We spoke to founder and CEO Ian Ishida and CFO Fumiaki Koizumi [1] about how they will enhance their business using these latest funds.

Ishida unveiled that the company will launch its first overseas office in Singapore next February, intensifying their global marketing efforts:

We currently talking to a person in Singapore, and we’ll be launching an office there early next year, naming her as its head. The new office will be located in the heart of the Asian region, which will encourage more Asian people to travel to Japan using our service. In contrast to other travel services like Meetrip or Voyagin [2], our service advises you to visit a destination you’ve never visited, instead of presenting local experiences at that destination. So in that way, we’re not competing with them.

Trippiece’s key concept is to ask locals about local business and destinations. That’s why they intend to hire local people for the new office rather than just dispatch Japanese personnel.

To help users get easy access to the service’s travel resources on mobile, the company introduced an iOS app back in August. An Android version will follow by the end of this year. The app has a feature to notify users when their favorite travel plans get a comment from other users, and it helps increases user retention.

Trippiece has also partnered with established Japanese travel agencies such as JTB and HIS to work on collaborative projects. It also recently won the Chief Secretary of Japan Tourism Agency award. According to Ishida, these results help them get their name out there and win the confidence of consumers.

As for future global expansions, they will launch an English version in February, with an interface enriched with pictures and videos to help foreign people better understand travel experiences in Japan. The Japanese government and tourism agencies are holding many showcase events around the world, such as the Japan Anime Expo, where the Trippiece will introduce their services to those who love Japanese culture and are likely to travel here.

Including Ishida and Koizumi, the company is a seven-person team in total, comprised of engineers, designers, and a certified travel service supervisor.

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Plastic model airplanes in the meeting room.
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CEO Ian Ishida admires Australian swimmer Ian Thorpe because of their same first names.

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The commemorative shield of the Chief Secretary of Japan Tourism Agency’s award.

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  1. Fumiaki Koizumi previously worked as CFO at Japanese social network service Mixi.  ↩
  2. Meetrip was acquired by Japanese social game developer Donuts earlier this month. Voyagin is also establishing an office in Singapore.  ↩

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  2. Japanese travel startup Trippiece launches English version and a Singapore subsidiary
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User-generated travel plan startup Trippiece raises $2M

Takeshi Hirano Takeshi Hirano
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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based travel startup Trippiece announced today that it has raised 200 million yen (approximately $2 million) from Draper Nexus Venture Partners and other investors [1]. With the funds, the startup plans to start developing smartphone apps. The company also invited Fumiaki Koizumi to the board of directors. He previously worked with Mixi and DeNA where he helped them IPO. At Trippiece, his main role will be to strengthen the management. We expected social media could help get the word out about the website, but this wasn’t the case. It has been more than a year since Trippiece formally launched back in January of 2012. Currently there are nearly 1,400 travel plans available on the site, and 100 to 200 users take trips using those plans every week. Management operations behind the scenes have become stable, and the startup plans to further improve that with the funds. CEO Ian Ishida explained that it hasn’t been a smooth ride for the company so far. The power of social media didn’t quite live up to their expectations. Trippiece is comprised of many small travel plans. We expected social media could help get the word out about the…

be1e58d1ca5cdfdb76fe7d8542ce8633

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based travel startup Trippiece announced today that it has raised 200 million yen (approximately $2 million) from Draper Nexus Venture Partners and other investors [1]. With the funds, the startup plans to start developing smartphone apps.

The company also invited Fumiaki Koizumi to the board of directors. He previously worked with Mixi and DeNA where he helped them IPO. At Trippiece, his main role will be to strengthen the management.

We expected social media could help get the word out about the website, but this wasn’t the case.

It has been more than a year since Trippiece formally launched back in January of 2012. Currently there are nearly 1,400 travel plans available on the site, and 100 to 200 users take trips using those plans every week. Management operations behind the scenes have become stable, and the startup plans to further improve that with the funds.

CEO Ian Ishida explained that it hasn’t been a smooth ride for the company so far. The power of social media didn’t quite live up to their expectations.

Trippiece is comprised of many small travel plans. We expected social media could help get the word out about the website, but this wasn’t the case. The community only became active when we acquired 20,000 users.

If a user-generated travel plan has more than five users apply to join, the startup will arrange a tour using its partnerships with travel agencies. Right now the service has more than 50,000 users, but they need to acquire more to keep going along their planned roadmap.

IanIshida_snapshot
Trippieace CEO Ian Ishida

The startup is about to launch a corporate membership system, with intended account holders being talent agencies or other businesses that have many fans. Trippiece is also planning to arrange tours accompanying entertainers or performers. We don’t know too much about this, but we understand they are in talks with several agencies right now.

Their user base is not large enough for a social media network. But they have improved their business model enough to step forward to the next stage.

Whenever I meet up with Ishida, he usually talks about his love for the service, and it’s good to have someone like that at the helm. It will be fascinating to watch him evolve this unique travel experience moving forward.

Trippiece started out back in March of 2011, receiving seed funding worth 3.5 million yen from Samurai Incubate Fund. Subsequently, the company also received 5 million yen from Movida Japan.

  1. Technically, the service name and company name (trippieace) are different in spelling for some reason. ↩

Related news

  1. Japanese travel startup Trippiece launches English version and a Singapore subsidiary
  2. asoview-trippiece-wide CNet Japan Startup Award nominees: Travel startups Asoview and Trippiece
  3. Tokyo Office Tour: Trippiece wants you to travel differently

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