Disha Shah Ghosh - Mumbai Amit Jaipuria, Founder and CEO (Chief Experience Officer) at Postcard Travel Club
Q. How do you differentiate Postcard Travel from a host of travel communities online?
We are a community-first travel tech & media company specifically in the domain of conscious luxury travel bringing together and connecting a global community of conscious luxury travellers, travel designers, storytellers, and boutique properties that collectively advance responsible tourism. Postcard Travel Club is all about conscious luxury travel, and we are continuing to develop products and concepts that will put the spotlight on this niche and bring the community closer together. These include conscious luxury travellers, boutique properties, tour operators, travel advisors among others of different countries that collectively advance conscious luxury travel.
Q. What was the vision behind setting up Postcard Travel?
Postcard Travel was born out of a passion project in 2020 when I was taking a break from a previous project and looking for travel inspiration. I found researching traditional sources for inspiration to be cumbersome and time-consuming. I found it hard to easily find a curated collection of boutique properties that offered immersive experiences aligned with my personal interests and hobbies.
With this in mind, I spoke with many other like-minded travelers who shared the same challenges being faced with traditional search options. I then spoke with many value-aligned boutique properties as well as tour operators and asked them the challenges that they faced in marketing their products to conscious luxury travelers. They mentioned that they didn’t have the budgets to compete with larger brands and OTA spends on search engines, social media was cluttered, and there was a lack of engagement within their brand community. They were open to considering alternate channels to connect with the conscious luxury traveller community.
This made us realise that there was a large “discovery gap” between the conscious luxury travellers and conscious luxury suppliers in the industry. Postcard Travel Club was founded to help bridge this gap and facilitate connection between the two. Furthermore, we wanted to develop a unique business model that would incentivise conscious luxury travelers to book directly with suppliers, increase profitability for suppliers, savings for consumers and collectively advance the responsible travel movement.
Stakeholders of the industry are primary source for any major change. In that context, how are you sensitising the B2B players about the virtue of sustainable travel?
Our definition of sustainable travel is when everyone becomes more mindful when they travel which eventually leads to sustainable travel. However, we are showcasing the work that b2b players (such as Rare India, The Long Run, and their members) are doing related to sustainable travel to our community of conscious luxury travelers. We also have plans to showcase the impact being made by our partner properties to other partners that are part of the platform in an effort to share best practices.
Q. How are you going to create awareness about the mindful local experiences among the Indian traveller?
Every immersive local experience is showcased on Postcard Travel Club is presented in the form of digital Postcards presented by a partner property. Each Postcard can be flipped to read more about the experience, collected to build wish-lists, shared with other friends and family on social media, and contains links to more information and the property website. Every Postcard is also indexed with interest tags, which allow the Postcard search engine to identify immersive experiences and boutique properties that match consumer interests and values. With this fast, fun and easy search feature, conscious luxury travelers can very quickly find value-aligned experiences and boutique properties that match their interests.
Q. In terms of industry alliances, which are some of the partnerships that you have signed on?
We partner with value-aligned collectives that bring together brands that advance responsible tourism, RARE India, Transformational Travel Council and The Long Run are some of the communities we have collaborated with.
