We’re thrilled to begin sharing the story of new tTravel, a travel app built with passion and perseverance in wartime against all odds.
In this article, we’ll take a trip down memory lane, recalling tTravel at its early stages and contemplating over the milestones of the long journey that shaped us into what we are today.
If you’re more up to video content, here’s the video story based on this article:
The Beginning: A Vision Takes Shape
It all started in late 2017 when we launched the YouTube channel #BEZVIZ with an ambitious first season showcasing the wonders of Indonesia.
I was in the midst of the darkest period of my life at the time and immersing myself in work on tTravel and #BEZVIZ literally saved my sanity.
The idea of combining the two projects was simple: inspire people with cinematic travel videos and provide easy-to-use itineraries to help them recreate those journeys without the stress of planning. To check the demand for such itineraries I created a simple website on Wix and uploaded a basic Bali itinerary.
This is how it looked like:
The website was really clunky and laggy, but the idea struck a chord. The positive feedback encouraged us to move forward.
Prototype 1.0: A Rough Draft
In the summer of 2018 we started building the first prototype of our future travel app. That’s when the name ‘tTravel’ emerged – when creating the first group chat for 3 co-founders Sasha Buratynskyi made a typo – extra t – which eventually became an integral part of the name.
In April 2019 the prototype was finally released and here’s what the first version of tTravel looked like:
Looking at it now, the first thing I do is wipe blood off my eyes but then I realize a galactic-scale progress we’ve made with tTravel since that iteration. The ugly duckling turned into a swan.
However, even with such a horrific design, the platform attracted our first creators and customers. Their support and feedback laid the groundwork for the future.
Prototype 2.0: A Step Forward
Realizing the need to drastically improve the design and UX, we started building the travel app prototype 2.0. Released in late 2020, it looked radically better and eventually became the basis for the first tTravel app.
We added a more user-friendly itinerary catalog with basic search functionality, included a creator section, and made the overall look more juicy and travel-related. We also created title pages of the itineraries, which was vitally important for boosting sales. Additionally, we streamlined the content consumption experience by eliminating the extra step of clicking on the “Day” button to access daily descriptions, making the flow much smoother and more intuitive.
Yet at the time we haven’t abandoned the idea of accessing locations’ content through geo pins on the map, which hindered seamless content consumption. We realized that flaw later on and fixed the issue in the next design versions.
Here’s how prototype 2.0 looked:
Overall, people perceived this prototype much better. But while the design was more visually appealing, it still had a major flaw. The mobile-oriented prototype didn’t translate well to desktop screens, leaving empty white spaces on either side. This pushed us toward a pivotal decision: focusing entirely on a dedicated mobile app experience. Web version meanwhile was put on hold and later hidden.
App 1.0: The Leap to Mobile
In August 2021 we launched tTravel app 1.0 on iOS and Android. This version introduced smoother content consumption with separate Days, Notes and Map sections. We also removed unnecessary clicks that users previously had to make to access itinerary locations’ content.
A big change was the bottom navigation menu with new ‘My bookmarks’ and ‘My purchases’ sections. But most notably, we unveiled the Itinerary Constructor, allowing users to create their own itineraries.
However, the constructor had lots of issues. For a really long time it didn’t support content publishing to the platform – the itineraries were stored on users’ devices only, making it mostly useless.
Also, the constructor wasn’t intuitive enough and its framework looked pretty different from what the itineraries looked like.
Here’s the flow of our constructor in app 1.0:
Overall, our travel app was met with great appraisal by Ukrainian travelers since 99% of our Ukraine itineraries were free of charge. But we failed to reach proper monetization and creator engagement. Those two key figures remained low.
We understood that relying solely on the transaction-based model of monetization isn’t viable in our case. We needed to stop being just a marketplace for itineraries and turn into something bigger, something travelers will use more frequently than once in 3-12 months and, most importantly, will be willing to pay for it on a regular basis.
Also, we realized we should shift the concept of constructor, as a very small percentage of users are willing to be travel creators. We decided to make the constructor useful for all users, not only creators, and at the same time solve the problem of stimulus for content creation.
App 2.0: Reinvention in Wartime
We started building the new travel app concept in late 2023 amid wartime in Ukraine. Tragically, we lost almost two years of time because of the ruzzian invasion of Ukraine. Meanwhile, several competitors emerged on the market, being able to work in peace and security, travel the world, and attract investments and creators. Under such circumstances, we understood that the only way for us to compete was to differentiate from them, to be as creative as possible.
Psychologically it was also a salvation for me, just like in that dark period of my life in 2017. I’ve lost an opportunity to travel the world and make travel movies since February 2022. In fact, I haven’t had a camera in my hands since the full-scale war started, so I’ve sublimated this frustration and creative restrictions into a new tTravel app concept. And it was such a relief and joy when other co-founders got excited by the video pitch I presented in late 2023! So, we started building a new travel app almost from scratch in wartime…
It took 10 months to implement the basis of the new concept from scratch. And even though we planned to build it in 5 months, this is still a huge progress in our development speed compared to what we had before. Indeed, what doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger. On September 21, 2024, tTravel 2.0 was launched on Android. A week later, on September 27, it became available on iOS.
Conclusions
Our journey hasn’t been easy. From clunky beginnings to the challenges of building a completely new travel app in wartime, the road has been filled with obstacles. But looking back, I’m struck by the progress we’ve made. tTravel today is unrecognizable from its early iterations, a testament to perseverance and the power of never giving up.
If you’re working on your own project, I hope this story inspires you to keep going, no matter how daunting the challenges may seem. The feeling of looking back and seeing how far you’ve come is priceless.
In the next posts I will delve into the new app’s design & concept: from product, artistic and even philosophical perspectives. Meanwhile, take a moment to reflect on our first version, then see where we are now. This journey wouldn’t have been possible if we had thrown in the towel. The best is yet to come.
tTravel now:
Bonus point: Logo evolution
By: Artem Shambalov