Tio

Global Tour Guides and Tour Operators:

International tourist arrivals surpassed the milestone of 1 billion tourists globally for the first time in 2012, emerging markets such as China, Russia and Brazil has significantly increased their spending over the previous decade. International tourism receipts grew to US$1.2 trillion in 2014, corresponding to an increase in real terms of 3.7% from 2013. This trend is expected to continue as the middle class in the world's emerging economies continue to grow.

What is Lacking?

A lot is lacking in this sector.

1. While there are a lot of payment gateways in the world today, there is NO single Decentralized, non restricted, easily accessible currency for the Tour sector.

All Debit/Credit Cards have Age/Country/Time etc restrictions and other online forms of payment have a lot of accessibility limitations as well. What this means is not everyone at anytime can easily pay for or receive payment for services rendered in the Tour Sector and there is no Escrow able form of payment either.

So for example, If you live in America and wanted to travel on short notice to take a tour of the Angkor Wat Temple in Cambodia, it would be quite difficult to find a tour guide who you can easily pay to pre-book for their services in an escrow able way, just incase they turn out not as great as they claimed to be. The situation described earlier is actually much harder for citizens of developing countries whose Debit/Credits are not open for use internationally. In their case they would have to take the dangerous risk of travelling with hard currency or using outdated systems like travelers check.

2. There is hardly any social network to interconnect tourist, tour guides and tour operators.

There is no known social network or App where you can go and check out the best tour packages by different tour operators (based on either price or exclusivity etc) for a particular place of interest, and then pre-pay or pre-book your seat on their tour in an escrow able way, just in case their tour turns out not to be half as good as advertised or your already reserved seat is “mistakenly” sold to someone else.

In today’s world there is so much hassle just to get a good deal on tours based on price, exclusivity, food or whatever other options matter to you. How nice would it be if you could just log into any portal and pick a tour operator or tour guide based on ratings, how cheap their tour is, whether or not they are okay with smokers, are dog/animal friendly, vegetarian friendly, are willing to accept a disabled personal etc and then pay via an easily accessible and escrow able digital mode of payment.