This app brings traveling singles together, says it’s not for hooking up
Why is it that, no matter where we go or what we do, we always seek out companions? The reason for this is simple: no matter how introverted you might believe you are, we homo sapiens are highly social beings. Even if we are alone, we still strive to share our experiences with others via Facebook and Twitter updates, or Instagram selfies (thank you, social media).
Because of this, those with a serious case of wanderlust can find themselves constantly frustrated by the lack of suitable companions to literally go the distance with them. This is especially painful because traveling arguably yields many great life experiences, and without someone to share them with, it can become very meaningless.
This is the story of Krystal Choo’s traveling life. The founder of social travel app Wander admits that while traveling, she often chances upon magical moments that she wished she could share with someone. “So really, I was my own customer – a single traveller wanting to share those moments,” she explains.
The idea for Wander came to her when she and her colleague were looking for traveling buddies one day:
I wanted to easily meet other travelling singles. My designer was looking for a Central Asia trekking buddy for months. Meanwhile, Facebook kept showing photos of friends going on short holidays with people they’d only just met, and it clicked. We got down to business the next day.
Wander is an app that helps you find other singles to travel with. It’s a simple idea, with a simple process. All you need to do is enter your destination into the app, and it will show you other singles who are heading to that same place. From there, you can match up with a person of your choice, and start planning your adventure.
Currently, the app is only available for pre-launch registration. The team is granting access in batches to ensure member quality, according to Choo – it will only be available to the public later this month.
Not a dating app
Interestingly, while Wander has little competition in this space, Choo says that they often get confused as a dating app because they cater to single people. “When most people see the word ‘singles’, they think hook-up. The dating landscape is flush with great apps, but Wander is not one of them,” she says. “We are all about creating a trusted, friendly singles community which is under-served in the travel market.”
A quick look at the app’s interface reveals that it operates very similarly to Tinder – swipe left to ‘like’ someone, or right to consider ‘later’. Since this feature is almost synonymous with dating or matchmaking, placing great emphasis on the appearance of the person in question, does that not confuse the premise of the app – to match people based on their common traveling interests?
Choo doesn’t believe so. In her opinion, the profile photo is important not just because of the looks of the person on the other end, but because it has the potential to show an aspect of the other party’s interests that might match your own.
“It could be me hiking, or someone surfing or skydiving – it just shows who you are,” she emphasizes. “Wander is optimised for mobile use and tapping allows you to go into greater detail easily. So I don’t think it really distracts because the purpose of the app already sets up a different expectation for the user.”
Additionally, users can state the gender that they are looking for, so it doesn’t exclusively match users with people of the opposite gender.
Finding the right graphic-to-text balance so as not to distract travelers from the original purpose is, according to her, their next greatest challenge.
Building a solo traveler community
The team has been working on the travel app for the past couple of months completely bootstrapped. Now, Choo reveals that they are looking to close a big round of funding very soon due to investor interest over the past few weeks. In fact, a single Facebook post that she published promoting Wander had yielded much interest from all quarters:
From just one Facebook post, friends started tagging their single friends, we got over 500 sign-ups, about 1,000 Instagram followers, and eight venture funds interested. In less than 12 hours on Reddit, we got the solo travel community engaged and excited about Wander, even suggesting features and concerns. That was a week ago [...] Our sign-ups went up by 27 percent in those few hours alone.
That was a great encouragement to the team, as well as validation for their product. Choo thinks that there is some in-built virality to the idea of Wander, with many who are single looking to share experiences with others who are just like themselves.
One concern that was raised by the community was that of safety. What’s to stop would-be predators from preying on clueless victims? Choo confirms that they will be addressing this in the next development phase by creating a trustworthy platform that discourages undesirable behavior and promotes safety, but did not reveal any further details as to how.
Can couples or families use this app to find similar companions, too? Apparently not – Choo says that they are “hyper-focused on serving singles”.
