When I travel alone somewhere unfamiliar, I want to feel safe, so I do not spend most of the trip on guard.

Job context

Who

Someone travelling alone

When

From choosing where to stay until returning

Trigger

An evening walking back alone in an unfamiliar area

Situation

Nobody to ask and nobody who knows where you are

Constraints

Safety information is vague and usually old

5 Pains

• No idea what an area is like at night

  High

  Day and night are two different places.

  Root cause: Descriptions of an area do not distinguish by time of day

• Safety advice is generic and dated

  High

  Applied to a whole city uniformly.

  Root cause: Advisories are written at the level of a country or a city

• Nobody knows where you are

  High

  If something happens, nobody would know.

  Root cause: There is no mechanism for someone far away to keep watch

• Eating alone is awkward in many places

  Medium

  Tables for two, menus for two.

  Root cause: Hospitality assumes customers arrive in groups

• Costs are far higher for one

  Medium

  A room is priced as a room, not as a person.

  Root cause: Pricing is built around two people to a room

5 Desired Outcomes

• Know what an area is like after dark

  Functional

• Have safety information at street level

  Functional

• Have someone who knows where they are

  Social

• Eat alone without awkwardness

  Emotional

• Not pay the price of two

  Functional

5 Existing Solutions

A solution is not the same thing as a product, a customer can hire a behaviour or a workaround too.

• Read accounts from other solo travellers

  Behaviour

  The most specific source, scattered and hard to search by place.

• Send a location to someone each day

  Workaround

  Manufacturing a watcher, dependent on remembering to send.

• Stay somewhere central and busy

  Behaviour

  A clear reduction in risk, always at a higher price.

• Join a small group tour

  Service

  Provides company, taking away the freedom that was the point.

• Be back before dark

  Behaviour

  The surest method, cutting half the trip away.

2 Opportunity Gaps

• Safety information is written at the scale of a city, while what decides anything is one street at one hour, and the two scales are too far apart for the first to say anything about the second.

  Why existing solutions fail: No organisation will publish at street level, because doing so labels places where people live and trade, so the city level is the only safe level to speak at, and it is useless to someone standing on a corner.

  Potential opportunity: Street-and-hour specific experience left by solo travellers for each other.

• The entire industry is built on the assumption of two travellers, from room rates to restaurant tables, so someone alone pays more and is served worse at every step.

  Why existing solutions fail: The real cost of a room barely changes with occupancy, so pricing by room is rational for the seller, and it pushes the whole difference onto a growing group of customers nobody has redesigned the product for.

  Potential opportunity: Accommodation and dining designed for one, rather than a shrunken version of the product for two.