TripBop.com was founded by Barry Cox and Steve Falk in 2010 as a way to connect vacationers with travel providers. Before founding TripBop, Barry and Steve have 6 years of experience in the hospitality industry as co-owners of the resort vacation rental company 'SkyRun Vacation Rentals' which is a vacation provider. Before his experience at SkyRun, Barry was an IBM executive for 22 years. Steve was the VP of Business Development for several different technology companies as well as a practicing attorney before SkyRun. Each has families and two children that all love to travel the world. So from their perspective as travellers and vacation providers, they noticed a few trends that make TripBop.com a valuable resource both for travellers and for trip providers.
- Nearly every sophisticated vacationer now uses the internet to research, plan and purchase trips.
- This research can take the vacationer hours, days or weeks of time and involves searching online and interacting with multiple vacation providers like lodging providers, equipment rental providers, rental car agencies, airlines etc through a combination of viewing websites as well as email and phone exchanges. Each time the vacationer must type in or explain their needs again and ask for a price and wait for a response, record it and go to the next one. And if you don't look at or call dozens of providers, how do you know you got the best deal??? The more providers competing for our travel business, the better for us!
- In today's economy with frugal vacationers, vacation providers are HUNGRY for more leads. They are eager to help and get offers out there and share their expertise about their location with travellers that need what they offer.
In essence, vacationers know what they want, and vacation providers know what they can offer. There MUST be a better way to get them together. We feel that TripBop.com is that way.
On TripBop.com, you spend 5 minutes describing your dream vacation (for free), and vacation providers search through them and respond JUST to the trip they know they a have a great solution for. One or more vacation providers present proposals including their best 'all-in' price to you and you can consider them and call just the ones you are interested in. You purchase the vacation directly from the provider, TripBop.com is not involved in the transaction or arrangements, that's between you and the provider, eliminating the middleman.
How does TripBop make money? TripBop.com is paid a small fee ($2 to $10) by the vacation provider for responding to the lead. Since vacation providers are used to paying 10-35% to lead sources like online and traditional travel agents, TripBop's fees save them money that they can pass on to you in the form of great pricing. In addition, vacation providers HATE empty seats/rooms. An empty room is literraly money out the door. So if they can look for trips that fill their empty rooms, they can often make incredible offers.
So in summary, TripBop.com is the LendingTree.com(tm) of travel!
We hope you enjoy using it as much as we enjoyed creating it.
Barry Cox and Steve Falk
Owners and co-Founders, TripBop.com