Our vision is to inspire and empower more people, especially women, to travel alone, giving Bourdain’s “happy accident” the possibility to happen.
We celebrate and support the incredible work of local experience providers and guides in Colombia, who play a vital role in enriching these adventures.
At the heart of our mission is a commitment to fostering meaningful, sustainable, and responsible travel experiences.
Travelhapp.com is a website and inclusive Facebook Group for solo travelers in Colombia, focused on (but not restricted to) women in their 30s, 40s, 50s and above who care about sustainability and local impact.
On our Website you can find useful information and inspiration for your solo trip to enable confident travel.
In our Colombia Solo Travelers Facebook Group solo travelers and locals can inspire each other with ideas for activities, tours and activities, and share tips, insights and experiences.
We will also let you know about interesting tours, workshops and other activities offered by carefully selected local providers.
Traveling alone offers a unique opportunity to dive into local culture, discover more about yourself, and learn through new experiences. Many people dream of solo travel but feel hesitant due to concerns about safety or the logistics of going alone. We aim to provide in-depth information and a support network so that solo travelers can fully focus on the pleasant anticipation of their trip and travel with a light heart, trusting that things will work out on the spur of the moment.
Travelhapp wants to promote responsible and sustainable travel. Traveling alone can be a life changing experience, an opportunity to grow and widen one’s horizons. However, as we explore the planet we are also jeopardizing it. As we visit lesser known destinations and talk about them, we contribute to exposing them to the risk of massive tourism. As long as we travel, we carry this responsibility and need to develop strategies on a personal and community level. We have started putting together some Responsible Travel Guidelines and would love to improve them based on your feedback and input.
One of our goals is to give visibility to small local businesses in Colombia that do a great job, especially the ones led by Colombian women. Too often local business get bypassed by big travel agencies that bring along their own tour guides and don’t really care about local impact. In Colombia tourism provides a new opportunity for a lot of people after decades of armed conflict. Small tour agencies often are run by enthusiastic people full of innovative ideas and with a great sense of social and environmental responsibility.
I’m Nicole, the founder of Travelhapp. I’m a service designer, art therapist and a seasoned female solo traveler.
So far, my favorite countries in the world are Colombia, Italy and Indonesia, but I think our planet is full of beautiful places to explore. It’s a pity that we have to work and can’t travel all the time…
I’m quite introverted and I really do love traveling alone because I enjoy spending time alone. (I grew up next to a forest in Germany and spent my youth daydreaming during solitary walks in the woods.) However, when traveling, sometimes things get much easier, cheaper, or safer in a group. And sometimes they become simply more fun too. More about this below.
My dream is that women can travel freely without the extra weight of gender-related concerns.
Travelhapp was originally an interactive Web App with its own solo traveler community that would allow people to connect directly on the platform for joint activities.
I conceived the idea years ago in a small village in Sumatra while desperately awaiting other travelers to join a jungle tour, which required a minimum of 3 participants. Since they didn’t arrive, I struck a deal for a solo tour with a local guide still in training, only to get hopelessly lost in the jungle.
Moreover, as a female solo traveler, I often felt doubtful when reading in the Lonely Planet that a certain 2-hour hike to a waterfall didn’t require a guide. Yes – but is it safe for a woman alone?
Since Design is about problem solving, as a UX and Service Designer, I decided to address the solo travel challenges mentioned above with a solo travel platform designed around women’s needs. I was lucky to secure pre-seed funding for a viability study and proof-of-concept. As the results were promising, I decided to turn Travelhapp into a reality.
Initially, I saw Colombia as a pilot country for a worldwide solo traveler platform centered around activities. However, I quickly fell in love with the country and decided to move here to be able to provide up-to-date and accurate information. There is so much worth seeing in Colombia that you could easily spend more than a year traveling – and the local people are simply amazing! (In the meantime, I got married to one of them…) A while ago Colombia advertised itself as a travel destination with the slogan “The only risk is wanting to stay”. Well, that became true for me.
For several reasons (one of them being my limited resources to maintain a complex application) I decided to transform the original web app into a simple informative website and accompany it with a Facebook Group for community interaction.
I would like to thank the Austria Wirtschaftsservice (aws) and the Austrian Federal Ministry of Digital and Economic Affairs for supporting the initial research and proof of concept of the original Travelhapp Web App through the aws impulse XS programme.
Special thanks go to my great team, that helped me turn the original Travelhapp Web App idea into a reality, including graphic designer Gaby Lucano, and the web developers Juan Carlos Salazar, Oscar Parra and Camilo Marin.
