You probably know your favourite city like the back of your hand. The London bar where you bought your first pint. LA’s best record store. That Barcelona restaurant with live flamenco music every night. Tattoo parlours in Japan. The biggest local street parties in Kingston Jamaica. We could go on…

The problem is, these places are rarely featured on popular travel platforms – no matter how convincingly they claim to know the “hidden gems” of your next destination. They’re the gritty old pubs that’ve refused to change over the years, or the underground music nights that prioritise their party people over profits. Places you’d probably walk straight past, en route to the most Instagrammable tourist hotspot Google can serve in six seconds.

That was, until Trippin. Founded by Kesang Ball, Sam Blenkinsopp and Yasmin Shahmir, Trippin is the new-gen travel platform promising to link you up with whatever it is you want to find, and facilitate positive cultural change in the process. Now an international community, they enlist cultural tastemakers to curate recommendations on anything from the best ramen in Tokyo, to art galleries or chicken nuggets in London.

In line with the launch of their new website last week, we spoke to Kesang and Sam about connecting cultures worldwide, the future of travel and how you can get involved.

How did Trippin get going?
We were frustrated by the lack of authentic travel content on offer, so we created a private Facebook group and invited our friends to trade trusted travel tips amongst ourselves. Word spread fast, and today this group has now become a community of travellers that see travel as a lifestyle and a celebration of global culture.

For those who don’t know, what’s Trippin all about?
Trippin is all about providing a refreshing and authentic voice for today’s traveller. Those that strive for authenticity and diversity in their quest to avoid being a tourist. The ones that are interested in getting beneath the surface of a destination and understanding the creative pillars that make it unique.

The platform feels like it was born out of frustration. Do you feel like it fills an important gap in the travel sector?
We were frustrated by the lack of authentic travel content out there – there really wasn’t anything speaking to us in the travel space. There’s nothing more frustrating than being in a city and being unable to tap into the good shit. We didn’t trust Tripadvisor and felt that other platforms didn’t offer a way to dive beneath the surface tap into the raw culture of a city. Travel takes you out of your comfort zone and into new environments, inviting you to view the world through a more inclusive lens. It’s a transformative experience similar to a psychedelic trip – hence our name – and it’s about time someone represented that.

Why is it important to you to create a community?
We’re powered by our community. They’re the reason we exist and decided to build Trippin. Community on every level is so important. Through our guides and featured content, our criteria is always centred around real people, real moments and raw experiences. We’ve always wanted to operate with a level of trust that we feel has been missing from other platforms.

What do you look for when choosing contributors?
We collaborate with creatives at the emergent edge of music, art, fashion, and culture around the world to share and exchange knowledge about the places that inform who they are and what they do.

What can we find on your new website?
It’s the only place to go if you want to have the best time the moment you land.

Where have you travelled with Trippin lately?
Sam: I recently visited Marrakech to create content with the people shaping the creative scene out there. We linked up musicians, designers and hoteliers to discuss their roles in driving a new movement in a country that’s deep-rooted in tradition. One of the artists we met was Issam, a rapper who draws inspiration from a multitude of cultures across the globe and really embodies the type of cultural exchange that we’re all about at Trippin. You can read the whole feature on Issam here.

Kesang: We took our whole team out to Zihua ,where we did an off-site for 2 months. A close friend of ours runs an incredible community hub out there called Loot. I remember the first morning so clearly. I woke up early around 6am, the moon had stayed out, the pink blossom light of dawn illuminating all the majestic plants. The silence takes a while to blend into your peripheral. Abnormally large crickets, birds, a gentle breeze, the patter of the feet of many insects slowly become the norm and sink into the background – a marked contrast to the sounds of London. I’ve travelled around the world, but something is different about Zihua, it’s more magical. It’s a place where you know change is inmenment and that really excited me. Check out the short film we shot out there, which you can watch here.

What’s next for Trippin world?
We’re young and still learning, but we’re really trying to tackle the social sustainable issues that travel creates. With tourism being one of the fastest growing industries, it’s fundamental that we use it as a force of good. Travelling sustainably asks us to broaden our mental and cultural horizons, whilst doing as little damage to the natural and social landscape as possible.

If you’d like to be part of the Trippin fam, you can join the community here.