You are currently reading Issue 38: Women in Travel and Leisure, August 2015
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Connecting women and opportunity

Womanthology is a digital magazine and professional community powered by female energy and ingenuity.

Connecting women and opportunity

Womanthology is a digital magazine and professional community powered by female energy and ingenuity.

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Making people happy by helping them live unforgettable travel experiences – Gloria Molins, Founder and CEO of travel start-up Trip4real

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Gloria Molins is founder and CEO of experiential travel start-up Trip4real. Gloria speaks several languages and loves to travel the world, having lived in five different cities and travelled to all five continents. Gloria created the platform to connect travellers looking for extraordinary and tangible experiences, with local guides who provide a real sense of the destination and encapsulate its spirit. The start-up is committed to putting the experience back into travel, one trip at a time.

Gloria Molins
Gloria Molins

 “…people should invest their time and effort in living different experiences if they want to pursue happiness. Experiences become an ingrained part of our identity and the people that we share them with become part of our life story and who we are…” 

Travel – only thing you buy that makes you richer?

It has been said that travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer. At Trip4real, we strongly believe in this and strive to enrich the world with our tailor-made experiences that transform tourists into enlightened travellers. As a hot, budding start-up, we specialise in peer-to-peer travel that allows people to explore the world off the beaten path to discover the hidden secrets of a city, its culture, and to connect at a human level with locals that share their passion and love for the place where they live.

Not about where you are but who you are with

Trip4real team
Gloria and the Trip4real team

I have spent years traveling the world and exploring new cultures, and I realised that for me the best moments were those where I was able to really immerse myself with the locals. That’s when I got to discover places that were off the map and away from the mobs of tourists that swallow the city. Those were the moments in which I truly enjoyed myself, concluding that travelling, and even life, is not about where you are but really who you are with.

Pursuing happiness by investing time and effort in living different experiences

Besides my life experience, this has been proven by a study conducted by Dr. Thomas Gilovich, a psychology professor at Cornell University, who has been studying the question of what makes people happy. He concluded that people should invest their time and effort in living different experiences if they want to pursue happiness. Experiences become an ingrained part of our identity and the people that we share them with become part of our life story and who we are.

Helping people live unforgettable travel experiences

Shouldn’t we be making experiences easier for people to have? I put the pieces together and decided to create an online platform to connect locals and travellers. Hence, Trip4real is a tool for people from all over the world to meet in person to share experiences, stories, and ultimately, cultures.

My goal and mission is to help people live unforgettable travel experiences like I have, spreading happiness. And Trip4real is about the human connection, the personal experience, the concept of experiential travel that when people get to try they simply fall in love with it.

Travelling under the guidance of those who know a city the best – the locals

The peer-to-peer tourism sector has grown substantially over the past years to the point in which many people prefer to travel under the guidance of those who know a city the best: its locals. Because of this, the experiences offered at Trip4real are exclusively led and created by locals to give travellers a taste of their city and reveal its quirks invisible to the tourist’s eye!

We offer more than 4,000 experiences across the main European capitals: London, Amsterdam, Dublin, Edinburgh, Paris, Rome, Madrid, Lisbon, of course, Barcelona and all over Spain. Our goal is to keep expanding around Europe and of course other continents like Latin America and Asia. That is our focus right now, international expansion, after becoming leaders in our own country, Spain.

Being the only woman in the room

As a woman CEO in a travel start-up, I must say that it hasn’t been easy materialising this idea of mine, but starting a business and selling your big idea to investors isn’t easy for anyone, man or woman. The difference has been that most of the time, when I join conferences or important meetings, I’m the only woman.

I’ve found a high level of respect and credibility when speaking as a woman in business, because when you lead a successful team and a company like Trip4real people admire you no matter who you are.

My hope is that in a near future there is no difference between being a businesswoman or a businessman. I cannot predict the future in that regard, but what I’m certain about is that peer-to-peer experiential travel is becoming a trend, and the travel industry heading that way.

 

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http://www.trip4real.com/

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