Aside from joining a tour group or traveling solo with just a guidebook, it sounds really cool to have a local show you around before you even leave home.
A Perfect Trip
This was the second trip to Jeju Island for Ms. Hua and her husband Mr. Li from Beijing. This time, she brought along their 4-year-old daughter BELLA. Unlike their previous trip, Ms. Hua discovered an app called "You Come Overseas Travel" and successfully found a local guide, Miss Song, who accompanied them throughout their family trip to Jeju.
After arriving at Jeju International Airport, the Hua family of three smoothly got into Miss Song’s car. After a forty-minute drive, they arrived at the Lotte Hotel and began their four-day family trip to Jeju.
"We had expectations about the person who would be hosting us, and our child wasn’t uncomfortable at all. We got along really well with Miss Song," Ms. Hua commented on the trip. "One day when it poured rain in Jeju, our itinerary changed, and Miss Song took us to the Hello Kitty Theme Park and the Dolphin Experience Center — it was perfect." Aside from being satisfied with the trip itself, Ms. Hua spoke highly of the social aspect brought by having a local companion. "Traveling while chatting like friends, hearing about Miss Song’s interesting life experiences in Korea."
For family trips with young children, mothers like Ms. Hua are most concerned about "reliability, comfort, and freedom." Having a compatible local guide arranged in advance, and being accompanied by a local during the trip, undoubtedly solves these issues. Therefore, this trip turned Ms. Hua into a loyal user of "You Come Overseas Travel," and she recommended the app to her friends through social media.
How to solve "fluid trust"
Perhaps China's tourism market is still young, and Chinese tourists' habitual wariness of strangers continues to challenge this business model. Therefore, in addition to highlighting outstanding locals through a credit system and traveler review mechanism within the app, over the past six months, key members of the "You Come Overseas Travel" operations team have been traveling overseas extensively to screen and personally verify the flood of local guides applying to join. They conducted one-on-one interviews with every prospective local, patiently conveying the culture, values, and importance of personal credibility within "You Come Overseas Travel."
Fortunately, compared to a few years ago, as social apps like WeChat and Weibo have risen in popularity, building "fluid trust" between travelers and strangers seems to have become easier. On the "You Come Overseas Travel" app, aside from unified tags such as "speaks Chinese" and "familiar with the area," the locals travelers can choose from also boast rich individual characteristics. Most importantly, they almost without exception maintain good responsiveness to travelers and accumulate positive reviews.
"Actually, this kind of fluid trust brings you something more unique," said Mr. Wang, formerly a die-hard backpacker. But on his trip to Seoul this time, he chose a sporty Chinese female international student as his guide. "Before going to Seoul, I had an in-depth chat with this girl on You Come Overseas Travel. When we met, it felt like seeing an old friend," Mr. Wang said with a smile. That afternoon, they rode bikes along the Han River, and for dinner, they set up a tent by the park. Mr. Wang, the Chinese student, and her classmates ate fried chicken, drank beer, and chatted about Korean local culture. "It didn’t cost much, so I didn’t mind inviting her classmate to join the conversation."
The future of mobile travel apps
"This app has really impacted how I think about travel in the future. Even without language barriers, I’d consider choosing a local guide. It’s like traveling in another city in China — having a local with you is a completely different experience compared to going solo," Mr. Wang concluded. "Next time I travel, I’ll use You Come Overseas Travel again."
Aside from the hard work of mobile app entrepreneurs, as these travelers have said, perhaps the richness that the internet age brings to our lives is truly something to look forward to.