Ravle helps you live the adventure

Ravle team, Kevin Rieck and Tay Lotte

After scouring the Internet for the most affordable transportation to your next destination, you’ve finally booked your tickets. Now, the fun really begins. Every year, 300 million travelers watch travel videos when planning their next trip, spending an average of 20 hours online and visiting 38 websites. Ravle cuts through this clutter of  information by working with top international travel filmmakers to allow them to turn their video’s into mapped itineraries and bookable experiences.

Founded in February of 2017 as a travel experience company, Ravle allows talented travel filmmakers to turn their elegantly produced videos into real, intimate adventures that viewers can literally step into. With a mission to help others travel in a unique but affordable way, co-founder Kevin Rieck started looking into the data of who watches travel films to build their itinerary. He found that 70% of travel film viewers are in the process of planning a trip. An avid filmmaker and traveler himself, he saw that a platform that combines both creative outlets and off road travelling would change the process of interactive trip planning. Ravle’s global collective of filmmakers, who are both adventurers and video artists, engages viewers in one-of-a-kind travel experiences to destinations they might never otherwise experience.  The Ravle website makes booking these curated trips in a simple, seamless way.

Co-founder Kevin Rieck is a junior studying information technology, product design and entrepreneurship. Ravle’s co-founder and head designer Tay Lotte is a junior studying Creative Leadership. Together with two developers, the team developed a beautiful beta website that won second prize in the 2017 Panasci Business Plan Competition. This week, Ravle advanced to the “semi-final 32” round of the national Student Startup Madness competition at South by Southwest. Held in Austin, Texas, SXSW is a national stage for the best of the best digital media startups from colleges around the United States.

Student Startup Madness will be announcing the next round of the competition, aptly named “Entrepreneurial 8” next week. The “Entrepreneurial 8” will be competing in front of a high-profile panel of judges at SXSW over spring break this March.

If you are looking to create a unique travel experience, check out Ravle’s official website here, follow it on Facebook here, and on Instagram here.

Photo and story by Amanda Chou ‘18, Blackstone LaunchPad Global Media Fellow

Photo caption: (Left) Kevin Rieck and (right) Tay Lotte.