Looking for honest feedback on our newly launched travel platform - TRAppe

Hi Travel Massive community 👋

I want to open myself up to some very honest feedback on my travel platform and know this community isn’t afraid to be honest.

I’m the founder of TRAppe (trappetravel.com), a travel discovery platform focused on helping travellers discover and book directly with locally owned, community-led tourism businesses around the world, which just launched last week.

TRAppe started with a small Bali experiment last year as a simple travel e-guide and slowly evolved into what TRAppe is today: a curated platform that prioritises direct bookings, local ownership and storytelling.

One thing I also want to be transparent about is our current model. Right now, all businesses listed on TRAppe are highly curated, we get on a call with every business to get to know them better and ensure they align with our values (and we have said no to businesses we don’t believe align). They are listed on the platform on a monthly or annual subscription, with the lowest plan starting at $5 per month, intentionally designed to be accessible for small, locally owned businesses.

We made a conscious decision not to go down the traditional commission route. For many small operators, commissions can quickly eat into already-thin margins, especially in destinations where tourism income directly supports families and communities.

We’re also very passionate about addressing economic leakage in tourism. In many destinations, a significant portion of tourism revenue leaves the local economy through commission-based platforms. While no model is perfect, we believe reducing reliance on high-commission structures is one small but meaningful step towards keeping more value within local communities.

While subscriptions aren’t a perfect solution, they felt like a fairer and more predictable starting point for the businesses we work with.

Now that we’ve gone global, I’d genuinely love feedback from this community. Please feel free to be critical and even tear it apart if needed.

I truly believe this is the only way to improve and build something that’s actually useful for travellers while genuinely helping local businesses gain more visibility and keep more value within their local communities.

If you have a moment to explore the site, I’d really appreciate your thoughts on:
- how usable it feels as a traveller
- what’s confusing or missing
- what would make it more helpful or intuitive

We’re still early, still learning and very much in build mode.

I’d also love to connect with anyone here who’s working in sustainable tourism, community-led travel, destination development or alternative travel platforms.

And I’m always happy to connect via LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellayan/

Thanks for reading and really looking forward to your honest feedback xx

"Every listing links straight to the business, so more of your travel dollar stays
with the people who make these places special"

I LOVE this model, the first truly fair one I've seen for an international travel platform. The website seems intuitive, looks good, and I like the extended details about each company that shows you really did your homework. Can't wait to see more destinations in Europe. :-)