Maybe you have tried it before. You’ve just been travelling for 30 hours – maybe alone, maybe with your family, nevertheless, your entire body is aching, and head is zombie tired. You go straight to exit, wishing to go painless to the hotel to recover and become yourself. Sometimes yes, you are lucky to actually reach hotel, with your patience intact, but often that’s not the case, and you walk directly into a crowd of loud talking and overeager taxi drivers, who want to take you to your hotel for the best possible price of the day.
You reach the first cap in the parking lot, you are still tired, yet excited that the holiday has started, but also a bit guarded – because you know you have to haggle for the best price. The driver starts high, you are reaching for half that and you meet somewhere in the middle – bit was that the right price? Have no clue. Next day same scenario, just different place. Do you know the feeling?
“It happens every time. I get off the plane after a long flight, just want to reach the hotel to recover a bit. I reach the taxi line and starts to haggle. It is not like, I don't want to pay a bit extra, I just don't want to be scammed.”
Quote: Michael Johansen, Hagglestar Founder and CEO
“I feel quite uncomfortable haggling about the taxi prices, when I travel around. I say run the meter, but recently I found out that the meter too is being hacked to show a higher price.
Quote: Lea Kilde, Hagglestar Founder and CEO
Michael Johansen had experienced the taxi scam several times from a vacation in Bali, and when he came back to Denmark, where fixed prices are standard, he wanted to dig deeper into the world of haggling when travelling in foreign countries. He decided to address the problem with friend and former colleague, Lea Kilde, who grabbed the idea immediately. After tons of coffee meetings, brainstorming and doodles they came up with the brilliant idea to help future travellers avoid taxi scams.
The two instantly teamed up and the startup Haggelstar was born. Shortly after the digital agency, Jungle Coders joined the company as an early investor to ensure the tech side of the product.
Hagglestar is an app that helps travelers avoid taxi scams. The app shows you the average price for a taxi ride in foreign countries, to help you haggle a fair price. Haggelstar merges well known features from Google Maps with local taxi prices along with a “translate address to driver” option, to make sure the driver always understands where you want to go. In countries where English isn’t widely used, misunderstanding and stressful scenarios are likely to happen, so the address translator will help minimize that risk.
It is pretty much like Google Maps. The app knows where you are and easily you can type in the address you want to go, where after the app tells you what price you should pay. In that way Hagglestar empowers travellers with the local knowledge of taxi prices and with a magic stroke gives them a better starting point for haggling the most fair price.
Hagglestar is launching in July 2019 and travellers can start checking average prices in Asia. Hagglestar is aiming to reach the rest of the world soon after to help all globetrotters avoid being taxi scammed.
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