TripSync: Al-Powered Social Travel Companion Platform

Abstract

The TripSync application is a social media platform with a focus on travel that aims to create a seamless experience with features such as content sharing, real-time location discovery, and collaborative expense management. The application is built on a novel concept of a social network for travelers, which is quite different from the regular travel planning applications available in the market. The application provides features such as geo-tagging of posts, discovery of users through an interactive map, the formation of travel groups, and a debt minimization engine. The application is built on a modern technology stack with React/Next.js as the frontend framework and Supabase as the backend infrastructure. This paper aims to discuss the design rationale, system architecture, and features of the TripSync application and how the concept of a social network with real-time geospatial and financial features addresses the gap in the available travel applications in the market.

Introduction

To solve this problem, the paper proposes TripSync, a unified location-based social networking platform designed for travelers. It integrates three main functions:

1. Sharing geo-tagged photos and videos,
2. Real-time map-based discovery of nearby travelers and places, and
3. Built-in group expense splitting with debt minimization.

TripSync is built using modern technologies including React/Next.js for the frontend, Tailwind CSS and Framer Motion for UI, Auth0 for authentication, Supabase for backend services and real-time data handling, and Google Maps for geospatial features.

The related work section shows that existing apps like Instagram, Snapchat, Foursquare, Google Maps, Polarsteps, TripIt, and Splitwise each solve only part of the travel experience (sharing, navigation, coordination, or expenses), but none combine all of them. TripSync aims to fill this gap by integrating these functions into a single platform with real-time capabilities and group-focused features.

Conclusion

This paper presented TripSync, a location-aware travel social platform designed to unify three core aspects of group travel — content sharing, real-time traveler discovery, and collaborative expense management — into a single cohesive application. The motivation for TripSync stems from the fragmented nature of existing travel tools, which force users to switch between multiple applications to accomplish tasks that are inherently interconnected during a trip. The key contributions of this work are as follows. First, TripSync introduces a location-driven social feed that surfaces travel content based on geographic proximity, making content discovery contextually relevant to the user’s current location. Second, the interactive real-time map enables spontaneous discovery of nearby travelers and popular spots, a feature absent from existing travel and social platforms. Third, the embedded expense splitting module with debt minimization eliminates the need for a separate financial coordination tool within group travel contexts. Fourth, the AI-powered itinerary generator adds intelligent trip planning capabilities within the same unified platform. Future work will focus on several directions. Migrating the expense calculation logic to Supabase Edge Functions will improve consistency and security. Expanding the AI itinerary generator with richer personalization based on past travel history represents a significant opportunity. Support for offline mode, push notifications, and a native mobile application built with React Native are also planned to improve accessibility and reach.

References

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Copyright

Copyright © 2026 Trupti Kantale, Harsh Nebhnani, Ishika Khapekar, Dipanshu Karanjekar, Girija Shelke, Harshal Bahadure, Gauri Pimpalkar. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.