Private beta · first groups this month
Stop being your group chat’s travel agent.
Text Relay where you want to go and add your friends’ numbers. Relay asks each person what they actually want in private, sends two or three real options everyone votes on, then books each person’s trip. No spreadsheet. No chasing four people for dates.
Works over iMessage. Nothing to download, nobody has to join anything.
The real operating system of group travel
A group chat, a spreadsheet, and one exhausted organiser.
Every AI travel product makes the planning faster. None of them take the organiser out of the middle. The hard part was never finding a flight — it was getting five people to agree on one, and keeping track of who said yes to what.
Five people
Five sets of constraints, and most of them never said the real one out loud.
Twenty messages
The dates get re-litigated every time someone scrolls up and misses a reply.
One spreadsheet
Built by the organiser, read by nobody, out of date by Tuesday.
No decision
The fare moves, the room goes, and the thread starts again from the top.
How it works
Five steps, all by text.
There is no app to install and nothing for anyone to join. Relay is a number you text.
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1
Text Relay the trip
The organiser texts where and when, then adds friends’ numbers. Relay opens a trip — a shared object that outlives any single message.
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2
It asks everyone privately
Relay messages each traveller one-to-one: where you’re flying from, your real budget, the dates that genuinely don’t work. Nobody else sees your answers, not even the organiser.
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3
It sends two or three options
Not twenty hotels. Two or three real choices, each with a photo of the hotel and the trade-off named out loud — what it costs, who it suits, who it doesn’t. Each person also sees what every option means for their own budget.
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4
Everyone votes by replying
“2”. That’s the whole interaction. The vote closes on a majority, when everyone has voted, or at the organiser’s deadline, and Relay nudges anyone who hasn’t answered — privately, not in front of everyone.
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5
It books the trip
Reply “book it” and our team books your flight and hotel by hand: you get a quote and a secure payment link, and paying is booking. If dates change or a flight is cancelled, Relay takes it back to the organiser and re-plans.
Why people answer honestly
Private inputs, one shared outcome.
People don’t say “$1,500 is my actual ceiling” in a group chat with their friends. They say it to Relay. The group only ever sees the conclusion. Relay remembers your home airport and seat for next time — text “what do you know about me” to see it, or “forget my birthday” to delete it.
Told to Relay, not to the group
What everyone sees
Dec 21–27 works for everyone. Leaving Dec 20 would save $110 each, but fits one person worse.
Nobody had to say whose constraint it was. No organiser had to become the router.
Where this goes
From planning a trip to managing it.
Each version runs on the state the last one created. Coordination first, because without a real shared trip there is nothing to monitor later.
Coordinate
Understand each traveller, help the group decide, and book it for them by hand.
Execute
Book automatically instead of by hand, and hold the shared trip state.
Monitor
Track reservations, prices, schedules and what depends on what.
Adapt
Handle disruptions, coordinate approvals, execute the fix.
What it costs
Free for the groups in our private beta. After that we expect a Trip Pass of about $39 per trip — the organiser pays, or the group splits it for roughly $8 each. Not a monthly subscription; you don’t travel monthly.
Who’s building it
Justin Long (founder) and Michael Duan (co-founder), with Allison on backend and Esme on the groups using it. We’re measuring ourselves on one thing this quarter: whether a stalled decision closes in hours instead of a week.
Join the waitlist
Got a trip that’s been “happening” since June?
We’re onboarding a small number of real groups right now — 4 to 8 people, travelling within 90 days, already arguing in a thread. Tell us about yours and we’ll set it up with you personally.
You’re on the list.
We read every one of these. If your trip is inside 90 days you’ll probably hear from us this week — we onboard groups by hand right now.
Know another organiser in the same situation? Send them relay-travel.ai.