I am a traveler. I have different ways of traveling, from signing up with a traveling agency to designing my own trip. Although signing the contract with traveling agency is so much easier than designing your own trip, it is always a problem that they end up letting you stay in a sketchy hotel or taking you to multiple shopping centers, instead of important tourist sites. Trip4real may change this situation.

Trip4real, the Barcelona-based startup, provides a trip activities marketplace. People can find activities organized by the locals. The activities are all fun and authentic in the specific city, such as wine tasting in Paris, Michelin restaurant visiting in London, organic picnic in Rome. The price is around 15-70 euros.

I am personally very excited about this service. I think the activities on Trip4real are the ones that I eagerly want for my trips. Having breakfast with a german local in the cafe in Berlin, enjoying food with a connoisseur in Paris, visiting local shops with the local fashion professional in London, they all sound too good to be true. Unfortunately, they are not available in Seattle yet. But the good news is that Trip4real is receiving more and more attention and we may be able to earn bucks by hosting interesting activities for people from other places.

On September 18th, Airbnb announced that they plan to acquire Trip4real. Because the terms were undisclosed, we don’t know how much money the travel accommodation startup is going to provide in order to acquire Trip4real. But the deal makes people contemplate the purpose of this acquisition. Maybe in the not distant future, we can book an apartment and local trip at the same time! By bringing Airbnb and Trip4real together, people will have more authentic travel experience. Time to say goodbye to travel agents!