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How Voyla Turns Instagram Saved Posts Into Your Travel Map
Every traveler knows the feeling. You save cafés and restaurants from Instagram, drop pins on Google Maps, and promise yourself you will revisit them. Soon, the lists pile up, and everything feels unorganized and overwhelming.
For Anna Chau, co-founder and CEO of Voyla, and Mia Chau, co-founder and CPO, that frustration sparked a new idea. Alongside Ray Tsau, the Product and Innovation Lead, the founding team began designing a solution. “I keep capturing inspiration on Instagram… I just find it so messy. I can barely see my maps,” shared Anna Chau. “It is just like Instagram crossed with Google Maps, and we link it with the place, the location, and also the information.”
Voyla takes those saved posts and turns them into something useful. Instead of manually pinning, you simply forward a post and the app automatically maps it. AI-powered tags sort the content into categories that can be searched instantly. The design is visual, like Instagram, but everything is tied to real places with details, reviews, and posts linked back to their original source.
The app also features an Explore section that shows nearby places from Instagram and websites. In the future, they are planning on collaborating with influencers, as they have loyal followers who trust their recommendations. As Anna Chau explained it “Our idea is to help creators build profiles with themed lists,”. Followers can then explore their maps without having to scroll endlessly through feeds. The name Voyla itself blends “voyage” and the french word “voilà,” expressing the idea of turning scattered inspiration into something meaningful.
Struggling with Ineffective Travel Planning Methods
Before launching Voyla, Anna Chau worked in banking and strategy, but her passion was always travel. Over the last three years, she has visited more than 30 cities, relying less on guidebooks and more on Instagram and YouTube for planning.
However, this method took up a lot of time and was not very effective. “I asked my fiancé if there was a smarter app to solve this problem,” she recalled. “Even with all the new AI tools, nothing worked. That is when I decided to do more research and build it myself.”
In 2023, Anna reconnected with Mia, a designer and entrepreneur she had met at church. “When I got this idea, Mia was the first person I thought of,” Anna said. At the time, Mia had already founded FreeingHK, the first room-escape game company in Hong Kong, where she honed her skills in branding and product design.
The two began working on Voyla late last year. By early 2025, they launched a beta version on TestFlight and focused on attracting users without any marketing spend, relying on Threads and Instagram posts. The response was promising. “Right now we got around 200 beta users from organic social media,” Anna Chau said. “They already saved I think 5,000 contacts in our app with almost 10k places already analyzed.” A feedback forum built into the app has been essential, letting early adopters suggest improvements.
The startup now operates with a team of four, spread between Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the US. Anna moved to Taipei after joining the 886 Studios Launch Station Program in March 2025, while Mia leads design from her tech background. The company has also been accepted into the Hong Kong Science and Technology Park program and recently became one of the Top 10 finalists in the FutureTravel Pitch Competition, a global stage for travel startups.
Personalized Travel Recommendations Just for You
As the app grows, Anna and Mia Chau are looking beyond simple maps. Their long-term vision is a “vibe traveling” system, where Voyla learns each user’s taste and shows only places that match their preferences. “It will just show you places that are relevant to your taste your preferences instead of throwing everything on the map,” Anna said.
Creators will play an equally important role. “They trust the creator more than AI,” Anna explained. Voyla plans to let influencers and bloggers share curated maps, building communities around travel recommendations. They believe that combining trusted human input with AI organization makes Voyla stand out.
The app will start with a freemium approach, charging based on usage, but what sets it apart is intent capture. By analyzing what users save, Voyla can understand where they want to go and what they care about. This opens the door to future partnerships with travel businesses, brands, and tourism boards.
Building the technology has not been easy. Handling massive amounts of unstructured social content and linking it to structured map data was a challenge. “Google Maps has categories like café or restaurant,” Anna said. “But on social media, people use their own tags, like ‘matcha café.’ We had to find a way to organize all of that.”
Despite the technical hurdles, they remain optimistic. Their goal now is to reach 10,000 active users and prove the problem is real. As Anna summed it up, the mission is to make travel planning “simple, organized, and meaningful.” With a mix of AI, design, and creator trust, Voyla hopes to turn everyday inspiration into journeys people actually take.
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