In a sea of AI travel-planning apps, a new startup called Boop aims to redefine the space with a new approach: turning social recommendations into bookable itineraries. Instead of getting a random AI-generated travel plan, the app offers users access to itineraries from real people who went on real trips.
When someone takes a trip, Boop uses AI to quickly turn their trip into an itinerary that others can copy and personalize, mainly by looking at location data and metadata from photos they share with the app. The idea is to build a network of shared itineraries that people can monetize, giving travel creators another way to earn money from their recommendations.
The startup was founded in February by Nancy Li Smith, who previously led AR/VR innovation at Meta and Microsoft and served as executive vice president of growth and strategy at physical AI startup BrightAI.
Smith came up with the idea for Boop after feeling like there wasn’t a way for her to remember or share her own travel recommendations efficiently.
She also wanted to address the stress and emotional labor that often come with planning travel, especially since women make roughly 80% of travel decisions and often feel pressure to make every trip perfect.
“Women are majority of the time the planner in the in the relationship and in the family and the friends groups,” Smith said during an interview with TechCrunch. “There’s this pressure to make every trip amazing, not only for yourself or your partner, for your family, for your friends. All these years of the emotional and logistical labor for free. Boop is now solving this so that we can capture this easily without people doing anything.”
Instead of having to scour TikTok for recommendations, sift through hundreds of reviews, and pin ideas across Google Maps, users can access tested and loved itineraries from creators and friends.
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“Boop is the first AI travel companion that’s built on social trust,” Smith said. “What that means is, the moment you start going on a trip and start exploring and roaming around, Boop basically remembers your trip in the background, so all your stops, your photos, your reservations, and in the background turns this into a beautiful, shoppable itinerary that friends can now actually use.”
She continued, “And so how that works is, instead of planning from scratch — which is like a weeks-long process — you can now just copy your friends’ real Tokyo or Paris trip itinerary. And in one tap, you can chat with AI and in minutes be able to personalize it to make it your own.”
When users starts “capturing” a trip, the app tracks their movements in the background, similar to how a fitness app tracks steps or running routes, if the user has given the app permission to do do. The company says Boop’s AI doesn’t use location data for anything other than capturing trips and offering recommendations. For instance, if a user has shared an interest in art and is located in the 11th arrondissement in Paris, Boop may direct them to Atelier des Lumières.
In the future, Boop plans to integrate with users calendars, with their permission, in order to access existing reservations and add them to their itineraries.
Smith says Boop is helpful when you’re on the road, too, not just when planning a trip. For example, if you’re standing in the middle of Tokyo at 11 pm feeling spontaneous, Boop can recommend something for you to do based on your taste and your friends’ recommendations.
Boop is launching on Tuesday on mobile and is currently available on an invite-only basis. The company currently has a public waitlist that users can join.
Boop is offering early access to select travel creators whose trips people already want to copy, Smith says. The startup has seen interest from creators who already share their travels and are looking for a way to earn from their recommendations. Creators can share their trips with followers through a “Boop with me” link that includes affiliate links.
“When people copy the link and book, we automatically integrate affiliate commission APIs from the industry, and we generate the industry standard of 10 to 25% commissions, and we turn half of that back to the creators,” Smith said. “With each copy, that means 50 to 100 bucks. And if you’re an influencer with 100,000 followers, and you have 100 people copying this, it becomes a five [or] six figure income down the road.”
Boop is working with hotel and experience affiliate aggregation companies and using APIs to access affiliate booking inventory from platforms such as Expedia, Booking.com, Marriott, and Viator.
Smith says Boop is fortunate to be backed by leaders from TripAdvisor, Marriott, and Expedia, noting that they understand travel and consumer behavior. Notable investors include Stephen Kaufer, co‑founder and former CEO of Tripadvisor, and Stephanie Linnartz, the former president of Marriott International.
In terms of funding, Boop raised $3.2 million in pre-seed funding in May, co-led by BBG Ventures and Lynn Capital.
As for the future, Boop wants to be the go-to place for booking travel, especially as research shows that Gen Zs are less likely to view travel as a discretionary expense.
“In five years, what we the team internally talked about is when someone wants to plan a trip, they won’t say, check the reviews, they’ll say, copy my Boop,” Smith said. “And, so every real trip becomes a guide, and every memory becomes a new currency.”
