POV: Triporia

Guest Post
by Steve Schaffer
Co-Founder and Marketing Manager
Triporia.com

Triporia.com is a video sharing website that connects travelers, through video, to all travel related businesses. The site was started with the spirit that small businesses are some of the best places to eat, sleep and visit. It’s hard to find a place you hear through word of mouth and Triporia.com was designed to accommodate this. Small business owners now have the ability to compete for the traveler’s dollar on the same level as these larger organizations.

Triporia.com allows a business to upload a video of their establishment at no cost. Prospective travelers to their city can view these videos to research restaurants, hotels, bed and breakfasts, resorts, golf courses and other attractions that they would like to visit during their stay.

The company was started by myself, Steve Schaffer, my Brother in Law, Cameron Brown, and my stepson Chris Scott. It was an idea that came to me on a trip to Grand Forks North Dakota which is a 2 1/2 hour drive from where I live in Winnipeg. My wife and I travel a lot. Whether we go just a hundred miles to all the way across the continent, we just love to travel. When we travel, we like to research destinations before we go to try and sort out what we think we would enjoy doing or where we would like to stay and what does not look attractive to us. We found that there was no one website that could help us with this task. We were constantly going from one website to another, and then still most of the sites did not give you a very accurate idea of what the place was really about. My stepson and I decided to try and put a site together that would help people research these destinations on one website. My brother in law came in, as he is a part time web programmer, and his job was to put our idea on line.

We also found that the more interesting places to eat, stay and attend were the businesses that had a local flavor to them. They were the family run restaurants, bed and breakfasts, attractions that unless you heard about them by word of mouth you would have no other way of finding them. Our thought was that Triporia would be a free site so that these businesses would have the opportunity to promote themselves to potential travelers to their destination as would large corporations that have mega budgets. I have e-mailed and corresponded with a lot of these small business owners, and I have been encouraging them to make their videos and promote themselves. We have received excellent feedback and we are sure to see more of these type of videos soon.

Below are three ways this site helps small business:

1. The site is free to anyone who wants to upload their video and promote their website as long as it has some relevance to tourism. Because there is no cost for advertising, this makes it easy for even a small businesses’ advertising budget.

2. The videos are not segregated based on who has the best video or the most advertising dollars. Everyone is on an even playing field. If you type in “restaurants in Akron Ohio”, all videos of restaurants in Akron will be shown. The little family Italian restaurant home video will be just as easily accessed as the big multi-chain restaurant. Triporia levels the playing field for all businesses.

3. The videos to the site can be professionally made or they can be made on a home video camera. Home made videos are an inexpensive way to promote your business. You can show people how your business looks and what to expect when they arrive. This will also show other people enjoying your business, amenities and the things that make your business special. Since you are the director, you can be creative and show your business off to the world.

Some ideas for making your own promotional video include:

1. Take a video of your establishment, how it looks, your amenities offered, video of signature dish, special hotel rooms and other featured attractions.

2. Include video of people enjoying themselves at your establishment.

3. Try to capture the ambiance of your establishment.

4. Include a view of the inside as well as the outside and video the friendly staff, and Management.

5. Obtain testimonials from satisfied customers.

6. Remember to show your address and contract numbers.

Have fun with video and show the world why they should visit your business.

To view a couple of sample homemade promotional videos posted on our site click on the following links:

Rongo’s Backpackers and Gallery

Castle Durocher in Montreal

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About Becky McCray

Becky started Small Biz Survival in 2006 to share rural business and community building stories and ideas with other small town business people. She and her husband have a small cattle ranch and are lifelong entrepreneurs. Becky is an international speaker on small business and rural topics.

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