Global user-to-user travel experience sharing – a travel photography app with a difference.
This innovative and refreshingly people-centric travel photography and experience journaling platform shares user experiences – pinned to their capture locations – worldwide.
The app’s founder, Australian woman, Obelia McCormack, saw the opportunity to make a real difference to the human travel experience and ran with it.
“I wanted to give people back the power to share and discover worthwhile travel destinations,” says Obelia. “There’s so much to do and see out there in the world, I wanted to open up the possibilities for all of us.”
The PicTrax app – free to download on iOS and Android mobile phones and tablets – bridges the gap between, for instance, the experiences of a local traveller/photographer who knows where to find some amazing waterfalls in Australia, and say a backpacker who knows many lesser-known hiking trails and beautiful views in Europe. With PicTrax each user’s shared experiences and destinations can be discovered, collected and navigated to with ease.
“Most social media content-sharing platforms don’t offer instant revenue generation capabilities. With PicTrax I wanted to share the in-app advertising revenue with users,” says Obelia. “Essentially, I wanted to be the change I wanted to see in the world. I feel that the act of sharing great travel and photography locations should be rewarded and the most immediate revenue generation method is through in-app likes.”
How this works: When a user likes an image for the first time, the uploading user gets a small monetary credit which can be redeemed when the balance has surpassed AUD$20. The monetary credit will vary over time with the variances in advertising revenue, but at the time of writing, the like action value is 2c per unique like. The current Like Action Value here is publicly available: https://pictrax.com/pictrax-like-action-value/
“Photographers, drone photographers, tour operators and destination promoters can also include contact info about their online portfolio or tour bookings in the comments field when they upload images,” says Obelia. “In this way, they can use the platform to promote their other real-world operations.
“PicTrax is a fantastic platform by which destinations and destination-based tourism services can be shared and discovered. A photography tour operator in Australia’s outback could be discovered by a desert photography enthusiast in New York, a farm-gate produce stallholder can be discovered by a road tripper with no previous knowledge of the local area, and a sunflower farmer could be discovered by a Photographer or Instagrammer to arrange paid access for a photoshoot.
“I love to travel, but I don’t only want to visit the same places (and ticket queues) as everyone else,” she explains. “Yes, I can absolutely appreciate the big-ticket attractions, but what I crave when I get in the car or board a plane is an authentic experience.
“It’s not so much the bar that’s #1 on Trip Advisor, but rather, the breathtaking view from a certain spot on a hiking trail, or a sea cave that can only be accessed by boat. But it’s incredibly difficult to find these hidden gems when they rarely have an address!
“You can use PicTrax to save your desired travel destinations to a collection. Once this has been done, you can see all the places you want to visit isolated on an interactive map – this is brilliant for travel planning as the cluster of pinned locations can easily indicate where you should be planning accommodation and length of stay.”
So how, exactly, does it work?
Well the app’s website, at www.pictrax.com, has a wealth of tutorials, how-tos and more. But at heart, the technology is incredibly simple and user-friendly, with several uses…
1. Build a completely private travel journal
Here, users upload a photo and supporting information, which is pinned to the app’s world map according to its GPS coordinates. They then choose to keep the image private, meaning it’s available only for them to see as a record of their adventures.
2. Share your experiences and expertise – and make some money at the same time
Here, it’s the same process to upload a photo, except users opt to share it publicly. Again, they’re encouraged to add in useful information about the from the location and ease of accessibility to pointers on anything from the nearest free toilets to the best clothing recommendations to tackle the local terrain.
3. Plan your next trip, find photography or film shoot locations, or just broaden your knowledge of what the world has to offer
Here, users can build their own travel itineraries – or just find fodder for their next daydream. This is done by setting up curated search queries. Start with a location, subject or user search term and select a filter such as ‘near me’, ‘most popular’ or ‘surprise me’. This helps users discover specific attractions clustered around their preferred destinations. From here, they can save images of a common theme to Collections, get directions – in their local language of course – or see where else a user has visited.
And yes, there’s an avenue to report inappropriate content.
“Ultimately, the biggest benefit is in education – with a global community of fellow travel enthusiasts sharing their discoveries via map-pinned travel photos. I had no idea how beautiful Kyrgyzstan is,” says Obelia. “Now, thanks to a PicTrax user who has either travelled through (or lives) there, I do! I can’t wait to see what others have discovered on their travels.
“Although we are not currently free to travel as we once were, I anticipate those days will come again,’ says Obelia. “PicTrax is the perfect conduit to invigorate diverse, dispersed and authentic domestic and international tourism.
“Users can upload pics they’ve taken from any time in the past, (just so long as the image is pinned correctly to the map, they have publishing rights to the image), and start sharing their amazing travel adventures now, growing like generated revenue and followers ahead of freer times.
“There are even opportunities to use the app for real world treasure hunts and competitions, the possibilities are endless,” says Obelia.
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