Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder. It's Monday the 24th of

November. If you were kind enough to be listening two weeks ago, you would have heard the wise words

of Cat Jones, the founder of Byway Travel, innovative organisation that is helping people to enjoy Europe by rail.

Today, I'm talking to Kat's sister, Claire Jones, who is doing something innovative in travel.

Claire is the chief executive of polar steps.

Now, you might think from that name you are talking about

Arctic or Antarctic trekking expeditions. But Claire, that's not quite the case, is it?

Not quite, although some of our users are on expeditions in icy places. But yeah, Polar Steps is,, it's a travel app and the whole idea of it was that instead of having lots of different spreadsheets where you're doing your planning and you've got a WhatsApp group with your friends and you're saying, what should we do, you've got one place to do your planning, but also once you're on a trip, and maybe you're not the kind of person that wants to post everything you're up to on Instagram. Wouldn't it be nice to have a place to share your trip with your closest friends and family?

And so with photos and journaling, like a collection of memories for yourself in 10 years. And so that's the idea of Procepts. It's a place you can plan your trip. It's a place you can track your trip and share it with your loved one. and then after that it's a place you can look back and relive it for the rest of your life.

And just to be absolutely clear, the journey could be as very simple as a day trip to the seaside, it could be a weekend in Amsterdam, it could be a fortnight in the Mediterranean, or indeed a year's tour of the world. And polar steps will handle all that? Yes, I mean, I love this question because, yes, even though Polar Steps is quite famous for adventure travel.

So it's definitely true that we have people. We have someone using Polar Steps and he's trying to hike the highest mountain in every country in the world, which is very funny when he's hiking in Belgium. But then you have other people who are doing exactly, as you said, day trips. So I was just looking and actually our UK users are top destinations for UK users using Polar Steps

include Thailand, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Vietnam, and then also the UK. They might be

going to Scotland for the weekend. They might be doing a day trip to London. So it's all kinds of things.

People plan and track all kinds of adventures on Polar Steps. Talk me through the process.

So I find the Polar Steps app, I create an account, what happens next? Are you going to start with your planning? So within now, you'll say to you, if you want to plan a trip, we'll say where do you want to go. And you can either be someone who knows exactly where you want to go and you might be like, I'm I'm going to do Tribuban for two weeks and I know I want to go to these four cities.

Or you might be somebody who says, we've got an AI planner and you might say, please can you help me, inspire me, give me some suggestions. So you can take either of those routes. You can plan it all manually yourself. Once you're in there, either through the AI planner or through your own suggestions where you want to go, we help you do things like workout accommodation, where are you going to stay, where you're going to sleep.

We can help you plan your spots that you might like to visit. So maybe if you are going to Japan, do you want to go to this particular museum? Do you want to go to this restaurant? We can help you make plans for those things. We then collect it all together. So when you, we all know kind of the problem you have of working out all the different place you want to go and then storing them and saving them, we keep them there in the app. And then what happens is, on the day you start travelling,

you click, problem you have of working out all the different place you want to go and then storing them and saving them. We keep them there in the app. And then what happens is on the day you start traveling, you basically will say, okay, this is your first day of your trip. And what it will do is it will track your exact location using the GPS of your phone and you'll get this beautiful map of everywhere you've been. And the lovely thing is each day you add a little thing called a step. So on each of your trip, you'll add a step. And that's a, like a diary entry. It's just your favorite photos of videos from that day. And the nice thing is, all of your followers at home, so your friends and family, so usually what happens is someone sends a link and says, I'm going on an adventure, follow me. And what will happen usually is it will be two or three friends, their sister and their mom, that's normal, or their dad. That's often the collection. So it's about five or six people.

It's really small.

And they'll get a notification. usually is it'll be two or three friends, their sister and their mom. That's normal or their dad.

That's often the collection. So it's about five or six people. It's really small. And they'll get a notification. So when I'm traveling, I post my little update and my mom and my sisters and my best friends get a notification that says, Claire's update for today and they'll see what I'm up to. Without me having to text everyone, without me having to separately say what I'm up to, so they can follow my adventure. And it's actually one of the really beautiful things is one of the reasons people love it is young people who are backpacking for the first time. It helps reassure the people at home. Parents often want to hear more from the kids than the kids want to say. And they don't want to text their parents every day and say, well, they're up to you because they are busy having the time of their life. Whereas with Polocepts, you can see their last location last time they're updated, you can see

that they're safe, you can see what they're up to. And so you have this lovely thing, which is that parents of kids who are backpacking are often one of our most engaged users in those weeks and months that they're watching because they're seeing what their kids are doing on their adventures. You mentioned AI. What am I going to get out of AI planning my trip, please, Claire?

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