THANKS to a new ride-sharing website, local surfers can get more West Coast surf, sand and sunsets in before the season's end.
Launched by Flo Devellennes and friend Anne-Marie Redhead, HitchTofino (www.hitchtofino.com) is a free ride-sharing website linking drivers and hitchers headed to a variety of coastal locations, based on the belief that outdoor sports should be as accessible as possible while minimizing environmental impact.
"The idea is not to just restrict the ride sharing to solely Tofino, but it's also to allow people to ride share around the whole of Vancouver Island," says Devellennes, 26, a France native and current Vancouver resident.
Departure locations vary as well, from the Lower Mainland and beyond. HitchTofino follows in the footsteps of Devellennes' and Redhead's successful HitchWhistler (www.hitchwhistler.com), founded in 2010 and also servicing the North Shore mountains.
"It's been really good," says Devellennes. "In the beginning it was a bit of a project just for myself because I was bored when I first moved here to Canada and I built it in a couple of weeks. Probably about a week after it launched, I already had 100 members."
Interest has continued to grow, and HitchWhistler is nearing the 3,000-member mark, growing by approximately, 1,500 users a year, many of whom are North Shore residents.
Realizing they were on to something, Devellennes and Redhead decided to launch sister site HitchTofino in May 2011 and have been similarly pleased with the positive response.
"The biggest factor that differentiates us from the other sites out there is that it's just the two of us just wanting to do good," says Devellennes. "The website is super usable, you can post a trip within three clicks. It's really, really easy to join somebody else's trip."
They also allow for comments and conversation between drivers and riders to further organize their trips.
They've taken a grassroots approach to marketing their sites, spreading awareness by word of mouth, via social media and by forming partnerships with ski and surf shops, and tourism partners. That said, they remain dedicated to spreading the love of ride sharing.
"We both have real jobs in the real world and this is kind of more of a way to show our appreciation to nature and trying to (encourage) people to reduce their carbon footprint," says Devellennes.
He and Redhead are continuing to grow their vision. They've also recently launched HitchRockies (www.hitchrockies.com) and HitchQuebec (www.hitchquebec.com), enabling users to carpool around the towns, cities and ski hills of both areas. They're also continuing to eye other locations, both in North America and abroad, for expansion.
Use of all of their sites is free and they're notfor-profit. They sustain the service through a recently instituted verification system, where drivers make a donation and provide their address, which they then verify by sending a postcard with a code to be inputted on the website, resulting in increased exposure. The only advertisements that appear are of partners who have similarly promoted them on their own sites.
"We're not really about making money, we're more about incentivizing people to care a bit more about their surrounding environment and be more efficient when driving their cars and saving money while driving their cars," says Devellennes.
