Nomavan

Inspiration

Many aspiring travelers and travel content lovers don’t know the real prices of food, accommodation, and other expenses at the destinations they visit. Even those who only enjoy travel content are often curious about the actual costs. There’s also a special kind of excitement when discovering that someone else is heading to the same place — it creates a unique sense of connection.

Signal strength is also hard to predict in many locations.

Travelers often feel bored because most spots are pre-arranged by travel agencies, leaving little room to discover unique places beyond the typical itinerary. Everyone has different tastes in beauty and experiences, but hidden gems are often overlooked.

It’s also difficult to meet new people while traveling, as many tend to keep to themselves.

What it does

Nomavan helps travelers and travel content lovers track real-time expenses during their journeys. It allows discovery of unique spots marked by other travelers, creating a sense of adventure and challenge. Travelers can also mark that they are heading to the same destination, creating a shared sense of journey. Nomavan also offers mini meetups that encourage travelers to connect and open up to one another.

How we built it

The mobile app is built using React Native (Expo), while the backend is powered by BuddyPress (a WordPress plugin). In the future, an offline-first mode will be implemented, allowing users to submit content even without an internet connection.

Challenges we ran into

Managing development time while working as a freelancer with limited availability was a major challenge. On the technical side, customizing BuddyPress to meet specific requirements was complex. Supabase (or similar databases) was not used because it would require more development time, considering Nomavan has a complex and specialized system rather than a general use case like a to-do list. Additionally, building for iOS and Android often produced different errors, requiring extra time to resolve platform-specific issues.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Successfully building a meaningful app that can help future travelers in less than 30 days, together with RevenueCat, is something I’m truly proud of. Client projects do not always move this fast, so completing this within a short timeframe was a great achievement.

This is also my second time joining a competition from RevenueCat (previously participating in Shipaton). It motivates me to keep building more apps using a subscription model — learning from failures, trying again, and continuing until one truly succeeds.

What we learned

AI-assisted coding has been very helpful, even though it is not fully vibe coding. It significantly speeds up solving logic problems that previously required much more time, such as browsing through Stack Overflow. AI has clearly improved overall productivity. Currently, only GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT are being used (without subscribing to more advanced AI tools yet), but there are plans to explore and subscribe to more advanced AI tools in the future.

What's next for Nomavan

Nomavan is not perfect yet, and there are still planned features that were not completed during this competition. However, these features will be developed and improved in the future.

Nomavan aims to become a platform where travel content creators can share their real travel expenses, helping other travelers plan their budgets more accurately. It also helps travelers discover new spots, mark risky areas, identify weak signal locations, and create small meetups with fellow travelers. Sharing stories with travelers from different countries can broaden perspectives and experiences.

Through these contributions, travel content audiences can subscribe to support and follow the journeys of their favorite creators over time.

Built With

• buddypress
• expo.io
• react
• react-native