Culture Trip: Travel & Explore

What it does

Culture Trip is a comprehensive travel platform that blends rich editorial content with bookable travel experiences. Users can explore detailed city guides, read articles on various destinations, and save inspiration to personalized travel plans. The app also serves as a marketplace for curated small-group trips, allowing users to move seamlessly from discovery to booking.

Where it shines

Culture Trip excels at creating a cohesive journey from inspiration to action. The app immediately presents a visually rich 'Explore' feed (00:05), allowing users to dive into content without any friction from a lengthy onboarding. The search functionality is fast and effective, quickly pulling up a dedicated page for 'New York City' (00:21) that aggregates all relevant articles. Its strongest feature is the integration of content and commerce; a user can be reading about weekend getaways from NYC (00:31) one moment and booking a 12-day grand tour of Japan the next (02:55).

UX highlights

Contextual Sign-Up: Instead of a mandatory upfront registration, the app prompts users to create an account only when they try to use a feature that requires it, like saving an article (00:57). This respects user intent and increases conversion likelihood.
Plan Creation: The ability to create multiple named 'Plans' (02:02) provides a flexible way for users to organize their saved articles, acting as a lightweight itinerary builder.
Clean Article Layout: The reading experience is clean and uncluttered, with clear typography and embedded links to related topics (00:44), encouraging deeper exploration.
Tiered Information in Trips: The trip booking section presents information in digestible layers. A summary view shows key details like duration and price (02:50), while the detail page provides a full itinerary, highlights, and inclusion/exclusion lists (03:14).
High-Consideration CTA: For expensive trips, the primary call-to-action is 'Make an Enquiry' (03:59), a low-friction step that converts users into leads for a sales team to follow up with.
Intuitive Profile Management: The profile and settings sections are straightforward, allowing easy updates to personal information and preferences like currency (09:09).

Monetization & growth

The app's primary monetization strategy, as shown in the recording, is through the sale of curated trips. There is no paywall for accessing content, which serves as a top-of-funnel marketing tool. Trips are presented with clear pricing, including original and discounted rates (02:47), creating a sense of value. The app also features 'Private Trips' (05:48), suggesting a higher-tier, customizable offering. Growth is driven by gating the 'save' feature, which requires an email sign-up (01:00) and builds a user base for marketing.

Who it’s for

Culture Trip is for intellectually curious travelers who want to go beyond typical tourist spots. The user is someone who enjoys reading and planning, seeking inspiration from well-written guides and articles before committing to a trip. They likely value curated experiences and are willing to pay for well-organized small-group tours rather than planning every detail themselves. The app caters to both the dreamer planning a future trip and the decisive traveler ready to book.

Notes & opportunities

The app performs smoothly, but the user verification flow could be improved. After signing up, the user has to manually open their email app, click a link, and is then routed back to the app's login screen (01:17 - 01:28). A more integrated deep-linking experience that automatically logs the user in upon verification would reduce friction. Additionally, while the content is rich, there could be a clearer connection between the articles and the bookable trips; for example, an article about Japan could directly feature the 'Japan by Train' tour within the content itself.