The global tourism community Travel Massive officially opened a new publishing platform this month at travelmassive.com to shine a light on new travel startups and initiatives.
Travel Massive originally started in Sydney as a meetup for travel startups, bloggers, and tour operators to network, and within a few years grew to chapters in 70 countries hosting over 500 meetups a year. Travel Massive’s audience now reaches more than 80,000 industry members across all sectors of tourism, making it one of the largest independent tourism networks.
During the pandemic, the team (based in Tasmania, Bulgaria, and Melbourne) worked on rebuilding Travel Massive’s platform to enable members to share their travel projects with the community and receive feedback and ratings from other members.
Based in the digital nomad hub of Bansko, Bulgaria, Travel Massive’s community lead and content producer, Maria Stoyanova, said: “It’s an exciting big step for Travel Massive as we enter a new era where the world needs to be rediscovered — we’ve built a digital space for everything new in travel to be shared and discovered by our community of travel insiders.”
Travel Massive’s new platform works by curating a feed of new tourism projects and content, from startups, blogs, videos, and tours — and allowing members to “upvote” their favorite projects. The most upvoted content is featured in Travel Massive’s weekly newsletter.
“We wanted to create a ‘launchpad’ for new travel ideas to be shared, and be a place where people can discover the future of travel. Our meetups previously connected tens of thousands of people every year who shared the latest in travel - so we’re bringing a digital stage to our members.” said Ian Cumming, founder and CEO of Travel Massive, now based in Tasmania.
Travel Massive is also opening up the community to travelers, who until now were unable to join unless they had an industry connection. The new platform will show the status of travel industry members with a blue verified checkmark. This approach enables business owners to also reach and tell their story to consumers — creating a vital connection to help rebuild travel and tourism.
Travel Massive’s city-based groups (such as in Berlin, London, and Colorado) continue to be led by a volunteer team of over 200 community leaders, who helped test the new platform prior to launch, and provide important feedback and ideas to help improve the community.
Notable new features of Travel Massive’s platform include:
- A weekly podcast covering the latest updates (for those who don’t read newsletters).
- A new events platform for members to arrange their own Travel Massive meetups.
- A focus on privacy with opt-in public profiles and no creepy tracking cookies.
- A new Travel Jobs Board featuring job openings and courses for travel professionals.