Accurate Travel Safety Tips from GeoSure

Michael Becker, Travel Massive New York insider and CEO of GeoSure Global has created an app which allows you to stay safe and avoid risk on your travel adventures.

GeoSure ‘s mission is to gather real time data about crime, illness and war to curate a well prepared guide to help protect and advise travellers while on the road. We checked in with Michael and asked him a few questions about what it’s been like to create a travel app from scratch.

Who is your start-up for?

All travelers, leisure, business and student travelers. Women travelers are an especially important demographic for GeoSure.

Why did you create this start-up? What gap did you find?

GeoSure solves the problem of destination uncertainty and imprecise travel safety information.

As I traveled to unusual areas of the world, I tried to research cities and countries as best as possible regarding safety and health. I used government travel information services but found them to be subjective, less timely and too general. I found they were written to discourage travel more than encourage travel. This is understandable as governments have an obligation to protect citizens when going abroad.

After interviewing numbers of people and organizations about the topic, I found that nearly everyone had the same sentiments. It quickly became apparent there was a large gap in the market for objective, timely, personalized, alternative and incremental travel safety information.

How is your start-up changing the future of the industry or helping to make travel better?

GeoSure is all about encouraging travel, supporting travel brands and empowering travelers worldwide. Ground truths (crowd-sourcing) enables users to share their experiences with others to help the community with safety tips, ideas and to reflect what is really happening street level in real-time. GeoSure is a worldwide platform for responsible users to share and post their experiences and insights – both favorable and unfavorable views – about cities, neighborhoods, tourist attractions, etc.

What are your best tips for travelling safe?

Be aware and be knowledgeable about your environment. Know what others are saying, and share your own experiences for the benefit of others. Travel smart and safe.

What challenges have you faced in getting your start-up launched and gaining traction in the industry?

To express travel safety information and to become a new travel standard, it takes time to become widely adopted by brands and travelers. We believe that soon all brands in the travel ecosystem as well as organizations such as businesses or university study abroad programs will want, if not feel compelled, to offer their users/constituents improved travel safety information. We believe travelers from all countries will check GeoSure for city safety ratings and travel safety information just as one might check the weather, hotels, restaurants and tourist attractions, worldwide.

What do you think is the biggest challenge in the travel industry you would like to see resolved or improved?

I would like to see travel to less familiar destinations to help support tourism economies in less developed nations. Global tourism on average represents about 1 in 10 jobs for many countries around the world. To not travel to East Africa or South Africa because one believes there is a risk of Ebola, represents a huge misunderstanding and negatively impacts citizens, jobs and country capital flows.

Do you have any tips for new entrepreneurs who want to create a successful start-up?

Try to differentiate your product or service as much as possible. Try to solve a big problem with a bold solution. Your partners and management team are the most crucial asset you have – but just make sure you know how they will operate when the going gets tough – and it will get tough as a startup.

Travel Start-Up is a monthly series that profiles unique online travel start-ups in the Travel Massive community around the world. Connect with GeoSure on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.