For Portico founder and CEO Jacqueline Hampton, planning a trip is half of the fun of any vacation.
Portico, the Italian word for “covered front porch” and the name of Hampton's early-stage startup, is meant to be “your walkway to the world of travel,” Hampton said. She sees the site as a platform for the curious explorer: part trip planner, part travel buddy and part experience-sharing, all in one place.
“We describe it as your ultimate travel organizer where you can save ideas, whether it's for an upcoming trip or a someday trip,” Hampton said.
Hampton developed her love for travel and exploring different cultures at the age of 18 while at Duke University. She was also interested in her father’s travel while he was in the U.S. Navy.
Inspired by her time working at the personal organizer company Springpad, Hampton envisioned a platform where users could save all their travel experiences and share them with others looking for recommendations.
“I love to travel on the side, and my memory is not the best,” Hampton said. “I might not remember the name of a café in Rome, for example… I used to have a Word document of all the things you should do in Rome when you're there. I had to go and find it anytime that somebody asked me about it and email it over.”
In January 2019, Hampton launched a private beta version of Portico. She opened it to the public two months later.
With Portico, users can save lists of places they’ve been or want to go and, if they’d like, make those lists shareable and public. Groups traveling together can use Portico to organize flight and hotel information. Reservations and confirmation emails can be saved on the platform, too.
The site is also meant to serve a community of travelers looking for ideas. Now, with travel limited due to the coronavirus pandemic, Hampton said many users are using Portico as kind of a vision board. Scores of would-be travelers are planning for future trips they hope to take in a post-pandemic world.
“Portico is kind of built for that person who reads an article on the weekend about Sri Lanka and wants to go someday,” Hampton said. “They may not go for 10 years, [but] two years from now, [they] have no idea where that article is.”
Since the pandemic began, the number of trip ideas saved as “bucket list” items on Portico’s site has doubled, Hampton said. The Portico team has also seen an uptick in road trips saved on the platform, earning it a spot on BostInno's 2020 Inno on Fire.
Hampton, who works from her home in Boston’s South End, has four other people on her team. Everyone is working remotely at the moment.
Sponsored emails, newsletters, investor funding and unpaid “nano-influencers” — Instagram users who have between 1,000 and 5,000 followers — have kept the company going. In late November, the Portico team launched a subscription-based app at the request of their users.
Hampton said Portico is all about bringing travel planning into the digital world for those who find themselves on the road, at sea or in the sky, no matter how often they travel or what their traveling style may be.
“Part of what we do at Portico and part of our underlying mission is to help people travel in a more informed way,” Hampton said. “We see travel coming back already, so it's actually a really fun time to be in this space.”
Portico Travel is one of BostInno’s 2020 Inno on Fire. Celebrate Portico and the other winners at our virtual awards ceremony Dec. 3. Register here.
Jordan Frias is a contributing writer for BostInno.
