Rollinglobe turns globetrotters into travel agents

Today, you can find an app for every aspect of your travel planning process. Booking flights, getting a hotel, renting a car, and even finding tourist attraction packages is easy on the Internet — heck, even on mobile.

Some of us are better at planning travel expeditions than others, so why shouldn’t they be able to capitalize on that? To bridge the gap between people who make an art of traveling the world and the rest of us, there is Rollinglobe, a website where travelers can post trips as travel packages and make a commission off of them.

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The platform essentially turns everyday travelers into travel agents, or Travel Pros as Rollinglobe has dubbed these vagabonds. Travel Pros host a profile with a feed of trip packages they’ve taken or planned that can be shared on social media or within blog posts and purchased from the Travel Pro’s Rollinglobe site. When someone buys a travel, the Travel Pro gets a commission.

“What we’re building is packaging application that takes that individual commoditized product, whether it’s a hotel, or a walking tour or Broadway show tickets, takes those individual products and combines them into a custom package that’s totally unique to you as the curator creating this package,” says founder Michael Nobiletti. What this means is that you can take the carefully planned trip you took to Costa Rica last summer, lookup the various components on Rollinglobe (which hooks into ViaTour for activities and Booking.com for hotels), and share it with friends, who can then purchase the trip themselves.

The platform hinges on the idea that recommendations from friends sell products. It’s a similar concept to Chloe + Isabel, which only sells products through a team of merchandisers who act as marketing agents to sell jewelry online and in stores. Merchandisers earn a commission on all sales they make, just like Rollinglobe’s Travel Pros.

“We’re really going after the freelancer market. By 2020, they’re expected to be more than half of the U.S. workforce,” says Nobiletti. Let’s say you’re a freelance art director or designer that always takes a vacation in between gigs. Now imagine being able to earn a commission by selling the trip that you took in your down time. You’re potentially earning money, even when you’re not working.

Rollinglobe debuted its site today at the Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator’s demo day. The company is set to launch an official beta on May 5.