Traveling is food for the soul! Taking a trip to new and exciting places only adds new and exciting chapters to ones adventurous life. Though seeing cliched tourists’ spots is great the real essence of a city can only be experienced by visit places that are local, genuine and unique. It is only such an offbeat path that helps you truly revel in all the joyous merriment the city has to offer you.
Nevertheless, the challenge actually lies in finding such places. The process of locating exciting unusual spots can be time consuming and frustrating. Thus to put an end to this unpleasant glitch in your otherwise perfect holiday, there is a new app in town called WunderWalk.
Meet the Masterminds!
Kat McArthur is the visionary founder of WunderWalk. She met Dave Baker for the first time at a Startup Weekend event that was held at Gold Coast, Australia which they went on to win. Dave, who is currently Australia’s top author in Envato Marketplaces as a web developer, built the MVP in 24hrs from Kat’s paper prototypes, as a responsive website. This was highly applauded in the Global Startup Battle 2013 from 112 global startups.
“After studying science, I caught the travel bug at 21. This led me to teaching English in Japan and briefly living in Spain and Scotland. After a recent trip around the world, I was inspired to build a hub for travelers to discover amazing experiences anywhere in the world that were genuine, local and unique (avoiding the typical travel cliche). WunderWalk is the first mobile app of its kind for independent travelers and curious locals on the go”.
Why is WunderWalk Awesome?
This kick-ass mobile app is the fastest way to create and follow walkable adventures by combining your specific interests into a live map route. WunderWalk is your portable concierge and tour guide in one app, that recommends a unique itinerary of what you like to explore, and guides you along the way.
With the help of this app, you can create your perfect outing in an instant that combines all the places you’d love to discover. WunderWalk has over one million places worldwide for you to discover. This app gives you countless options to quickly plan your fun shopping spree with your girlfriends, food safari to explore the local cuisine, bar hopping to have a wild night out or anything else you wish to experience.
You can also plan a group event by sharing your unique ‘WunderWalks’ with your Facebook friends. The fun in-app character allows you to create an exploring alter-ego. If your WunderWalk is the best in your city, claim your explorer status on the real time WunderWalk scoreboard.
To sum it all up, this awesome mobile app offers you a convenient walkable map route that joints your ideal places in a loop. It allows you to customize your walking tour by removing places. The live map will automatically re-route. You can also search for any global destination and create and save your WunderWalks for later. Lastly, experience the true life of the city without spending hours on travel, as the app only routes you to places that are just a few minutes away on foot.
WunderWalk is the ideal solution for curious travelers to instantly find places to shop, wine, dine, and sightsee. It takes rich social and geo data and enables ultra-personalized city discovery. It introduces users to places and experiences of their interest that are offbeat and not mainstream.
The Inspiration Behind It All!
Kat was travelling in Europe. During her one night stay at Barcelona, she wanted a classic night out of tapas plates, a walk to a flamenco dance show and a famous cava bar. None of the apps or tourist brochures offered a quick and high quality solution. Kat, to her frustration had to spend at least an hour in her hotel room on Google planning the best night out.
Now with WunderWalk it takes seconds to plan. It allows independent travelers to just head straight outside the door and make the most of discovering new places.
“We believe WunderWalk is the fastest way to combine multiple interests into an outing. Less time stuck in your hotel room”, adds Kat.
Challenges Faced So Far
After one year of starting up WunderWalk, the biggest challenge for a global product is getting traction with a super small team that is working for free. Now they have traction, with currently 6,000 downloads. However, the continuing challenge still seems to be growing the team with quality talent.
Kat totally self funded the project instead of opting for more traditional investments. They are looking to raise investments in the next 3-6 months and are in the process of securing seed capital with the Australian accelerator Slingshot Jumpstart at Sydney Fishburners space.
On Competitors, Expansion Plans, Target Audience and More
There are many competitors in the travel app category. The biggest competition for WunderWalk is from Yelp and Tripadvisor. However, both currently don’t combine categories into one map, such as dining and shopping. They offer maps full of pins and fail to join the dots like WunderWalk.
The app mainly targets audiences who are travelers and curious locals. WunderWalk currently offers walkable outings in 2000 cities for just about anything you love to find.
The future of this app seems exciting. They have just been accepted into a Sydney Accelerate program at Fishburners co-working space. WunderWalk has a giant wish list of features that they soon want to offer customers who love discovering, tasting, and experiencing new things.
“We’ve planned a model for in-app exclusive content, along with a travel partner/influencer program. The data will also become very interesting over time”, says Kat on their plans to monetize the app.
Psst…WunderWalk is free to download on Apple and Google Play stores. Get it on your Smartphone or tablets today to enjoy everything this awesome app has to offer!
To know more about WunderWalk do visit: www.wunderwalk.com
