Uber co-founder Garrett Camp's startup studio Expa has followed its restaurant app Reserve with a travel app called Spot.
This app promises to deliver the best spots in any country worldwide.
It sounds like a focused Foursquare that ensures that travelers will always be met with a tailored list of places to visit in whatever country they find themselves in.
As far as value proposition, the company joins the litany of startup flameouts that point to the travel planning process as a core reason for using the service, saying:
Today, figuring out where to go or planning for travel can be arduous. You ask friends, wade through reviews from strangers, search, collate, manually build lists and spreadsheets.
Spot takes the pain out of the process so that you can focus on getting the most out of the real world. With Spot, you can get off a plane anywhere on the planet and find not just the best places, but the best places for you.
Frankly, it's a little tiresome to hear the same reasonings being used for new travel startups. There's no travel planning problem; people enjoy the hope and promise of adventure that it represents.
There is an action problem — following up on any list and making sure that you accomplish them. Also, a geo-targeted lists that helps you not miss out on things you want to do in a new city, especially if you are just passing through and might have forgotten that you were interested in a specific place.
So there is a use case here — but it's not about getting rid of spreadsheets. It's about that Evernote with your global restaurant dream list or compiling the short list of must-dos for the next vacation in a mobile, portable format.
The app suggests its also about curating lists based on your demonstrated interests and network — which will include local expert recommendations, another clear differentiator from pure user-generated plays:
Your experience is based on your own unique network of friends and experts, so it reflects your interests, preferences, and tastes.
This could put it beyond TripAdvisor and Foursquare, and in direct competition with the likes of Localeur, which focuses exclusively on local curators to deliver place recommendations.
There's still little to say about the app as it just emerged into private beta. The app is noteworthy mostly due to its pedigree and backing, with significant resources available from the Expa organization.
Connections, runway and access to talent will all flow freely to this latest addition to the Expa stable, which also includes a hospitality-driven app Reserve and on-demand service app Operator.
There's clearly an opportunity to connect those two apps as well, allowing foodies to save favorite places in Spot and then booking them in Reserve.
Oh, and then of course: you can take an Uber to your Reserve reservation to the restaurant you found on Spot. It's a startup ecosystem that feeds itself without trying to wrap it all together in one overarching app. Travel is tough — but this full Expa ecosystem could just create a special travel product.