It’s a perspective that some of us may know only from our dreams: gliding along a spectacular coastline like a bird, enjoying the wonderful views of remove coves, golden beaches and turquoise waters below.
Now, with the help of the TripInView website, which is not just another low-budget start up founded in the living room of some student house by a group of friends, tourists can explore vast stretches of the northern Mediterranean coastline online even before they make a booking.
TripInView is the first online travel platform offering bird’s eye video and photographic footage of the Mediterranean coastline. More than 40,000km of coastline in Greece, Italy, Spain, France, Turkey, Monaco and Malta has already been recorded in high-resolution photos and high-definition video from a helicopter. All the material is geotagged and fully synchronized, meaning it is possible for users to jump from image to video (and vice versa) as they move their cursor along the map. And this is precisely where the innovation lies.
The company’s technology, which is patent pending in the US, is very significant as Google does not have a corresponding service.
Co-founder Takis Dimitrakopoulos (30) couldn’t be more emphatic and clear about the company’s vision and mission: to change the way people search and explore tourist destinations and plan their holidays, in the same way that Wikipedia, Google or Facebook altered the way we search for information and interact with each other.
The site began operating in May 2014 and initially spread through word of mouth to the point where, according to the company’s figures, it has clocked up millions of page views from users all over the world.
It has been used by yachtsmen in search of their dream port and geology students who want a close-up of the rocks on Santorini’s caldera.
In November, TripInView was the regional winner in the European Satellite Navigation Competition 2015.
It already has a decent turnover (even though Dimitrakopoulos declines to go into details) and hundreds of tourism professionals use the platform to advertise.
And all this even before the official campaign to promote the site launches in early 2016.
Although he studied economics, Dimitrakopoulos always had a passion for IT. He is one of the older members of the team, excluding his two co-founders, Achilleas Chatzinikos (the founder of the famous Computer Logic technology company) and Vangelis Kassimatis.
Dimitrakopoulos is optimistic despite knowing, as he says, that things can get worse before they get better for both Greece and the company.
The tourism sector has still a lot to give and he doesn’t believe TripInView will spoil the magic of exploration by making us all become virtual travellers.
“On the contrary,” he said.
“Don’t we always dream using photos and maps? On a different level, we want to help people dream a little more.”
