With the rise in services such as Airbnb, travellers have found themselves without access to certain hotel amenities. Most notably, a concierge service. Now, instead of asking someone behind a service counter, you need to scour the internet for things to do. Too much information can be overwhelming, especially in a new country. This is what Trabble wants to provide: curated travel information for those coming to Singapore. The catch, however, is that most of your conversations will happen with a chatbot.
Trabble, the portable voice of reason
Image courtesy: Trabble
The idea behind Trabble is simple enough. It’s an app where you can ask a whole host of questions about a place. Questions like, what’s there to see, or good places to eat. Singaporeans know that often the best places to eat in the country are off the beaten track. For travellers, however, unless you have a local friend, that information will be lost to you. Trabble is that friend, only in the form of an app.
Image courtesy: Trabble
Of course, it’s not feasible to have an actual human talk to every app user; that would be too much for a startup. Instead, you’ll be talking to a chatbot. Think of it like that Boyfriend Maker app from Japan, or those robots in chatrooms. Unlike those, which are repectively a toy and a means to scam you out of your money, Trabble provides an invaluable service, Getting directions, purchasing discounted attraction tickets, booking a ride or making restaurant reservations. All done by texting through the app. Like founder Jian Liang says, ““Every city has its own culture, history, attractions and language. Our vision is to empower travellers to be explorers by providing them access to all the local information in the format they know best.”
Image courtesy: Trabble
Right now, the app is still in its nascent stages, but Trabble wants to expand its capabilities even further. Trabble has announced, “With machine learning, there is tremendous potential for Trabble’s chatbots to become even more intelligent by studying travellers’ profiles and predicting their preferences to customise that perfect trip.”
Does it work?
Image courtesy: Trabble
Trabble launched with a media event on 9th December, where they also announced their expansion into Tokyo. I spoke briefly with the CTO Rys Bilinski, who explained all the work that went into making Trabble. Despite all the challenges that come with building any application from the ground up, there is plenty of curated information available on the app. However, Bilinski said that Trabble is now looking at curating information from outside sources. However, he assures me that everything is selected in-house.
Image courtesy: Trabble
Above all else, the app is still in experimentation. There is still a lot of work that needs to go into the app to get it to the point where the AI can truly react to every permutation of what a user asks. There are also features that the team wants to add, such as menus for dining establishments. Nonetheless, Trabble is a fascinating application which can only get better.
Trabble can be downloaded from both the Google play store and the App store. There are also chatbot features being rolled out on Facebook, Skype, Slack and other social media platform. If you want to give the app a look or find out more, you can find their website here. Keep in mind that it’s designed for travellers into Singapore, not locals, so don’t fret if your favourite haunt hasn’t made the list yet.
