Before you continue…. Watch our movie!
Upscale will take social travelling to the next level. We believe people are just as important as places. That´s why access and curated encounters is the key to the next-gen social travelling. On our platform, customers can manage their travel experience based on variable offerings produced by us, and influence others to opt for the same theme and components to create their ideal travel contents and ideal travel companions.
Upscale allows travelers to manage not only the places and contents of their trip, but also what people they will meet. Our platform allows you to connect with others even before boarding the plane. In a way, Upscale travelers can ‘crowd-source’ fellow travelers to get incentives.
Our trips will be based on themes and events, where we arrange personal and behind-the-scenes meetings with interesting and attractive personalities including local influencers, designers, innovators, experts and chefs at select restaurants. We call this ‘curated social encounters’. By connecting selected personalities and experts in areas of interest on-site with our customers, we upscale the total travel experience.
- The Upscale app is the core of our business. We will also develop, produce and curate travel programs contents.
- Upscale is not a transportation site.
- Upscale is not a dating site.
- But, we do of course not exclude that new friendships and contacts are created. On the contrary, that´s part of what we are here for.
Social travel is a trend on the rise and hostels are at the helm of the movement. Today that tribe is growing with reports showing that 35% of millennials are choosing a hostel based on the opportunity to meet other travelers.
This is what you need to use Upscale:
- Create or import a personal profile.
- Register for travel programs with “interested”, “going” or “invite”.
- Each travel program will show you who and who many are going and how many are interested. We know that seeing “who else is coming”, can be key trigger for your decision-making.
- If you introduce others, referral points are awarded that you can use in their travel experience. This means you can influence and manage your personal travel experience even before it begins.
- On Upscale you will also be able to share pictures and videos from your trip, link to other social media where this is done, rate and review your experience.
Curated Travel Experiences
During startup, we will produce and deliver travel programs to establish the Upscale concept. Access to our travel programs is limited to small groups. Long-term, we want to source contents from co-operation partners, and focus on the Upscale platform as the core.
Our focus
Upscale will initially cater to Chinese-speaking travelers and Scandinavia as a destination. Our focus will initially be on two categories of travelers:
Firstly, executives who value their health, personal and professional development as perhaps the most important investment they can make. Mainland Chinese outbound tourism grew 278 percent 2008-2015. In 2015, Chinese travelers purchased 277 million hotel nights abroad. 258,000 were in Sweden, which is a 27 per cent increase from the year before. Tailor-made itineraries are rapidly gaining traction among China’s high-end travelers, with the demography becoming better travelled, more globally-oriented, more plugged-in to the gamut of products available and motivated by more complex needs. Now the ‘real high-end’ segment looks for tailor-made experiences, niche destinations and properties with few Chinese guests. Here we see a great potential to offer Nordic outdoor sports, hiking and survival training.
Secondly, the LGBT community:
- LGBT consumers make up 10% of the global travel industry
- 82 percent of gay prefer brands that target the LGBT community
- 90 percent of gay people support businesses which target pink money, while actively shunning “anti-gay” companies
- 80 percent of gay men have travel plans
In Asia, the so called ‘pink economy’ is emerging fast. Taiwan recently approved same-sex marriage by law and Taipei arranges the largest Pride-festival in Asia. Hong Kong will host Gay Games in 2022, the LGBT-equivalent of the Olympics. In light of these developments, we see it as a natural way forward to offer LGBT-friendly social travelling options.
Scandinavia as a Destination
Scandinavia is trending world-wide, thanks to its image of coziness and warmth carried by the Danish term hygge. BBC and ELLE UK report that there’s an even better, more sustainable and enjoyable lifestyle that we’ll will be wanting, namely lagom, the Swedish concept signifying ‘just the right amount’, thought to relate to being frugal, fair and creating balance.
Scandinavia represents prosperity, a clean environment, gender equality, innovation and a generally very open and accepting society. The region is top-ranked in the UN World Happiness Report, with Norway as nr 1, Denmark 2, Iceland 3 and Sweden ranked nr 10.
Sweden specifically was noted as the world´s “goodest” country in 2017, outranking 162 other countries in a study by the Good Country Index. Sweden scores highest for positive lifestyle contributions including prosperity, equality, health and wellbeing, while also performing well culturally.
Longer-term, the Upscale platform will be open for any geographical and user perspective.
Business as a force for good
20 years ago the internet revolutionized the world – democracy movements, education and healthcare. The internet made real change. Social travelling emerged ten years ago, when travelers started connecting and sharing information through the web.
Travelling is a powerful source for driving social change, awareness raising and positive personal development.
We believe that Upscale can be a part of driving that change through our concept for creating and curating personal contacts between Scandinavia and Asia.
As a token of this, we aim to contribute a percentage of our profit to relevant NGO initiatives. We also believe that our contribution to such causes will be a positive driver for our customers.