An avid traveler, Eric is keenly aware of the time and effort required to plan a trip. Despite advances in today's technology, searching online can provide limited assistance but no conclusive advice for would-be travelers; and once they have arrived at their destination, it is often difficult for travelers to get local support due to language and cultural barriers. 
 
To help his fellow travelers bypass the hassles of trip-planning and finding their way around their destinations, Eric co-founded TravelFlan, an AI powered travel concierge chatbot that provides trip-planning tips and real-time support for travelers visiting Japan and Korea. No download is required; rather, travelers simply send their questions via Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger, and veteran travelers from the TravelFlan team will provide a bespoke solution within minutes. Eric and his team are now hard at work to extend their partnership network to different travel agencies and airline companies, as well as expand their service to Southeast Asia. Furthermore, they hope that in future years, the TravelFlan service can be used with other mobile communication apps such as Line and WeChat. 
 
To date, TravelFlan has raised US $300,000 from 500 Startups in Silicon Valley and other angel investors, with a goal of raising US $1.2 million in the next few months. It is part of the Hong Kong Science Park Incu-App incubator, the 500 Startups accelerator batch 17 and the G-Startup Worldwide Tokyo 2016 batch. The TravelFlan team won the Silver Award of the inaugural HKUST Alumni Association (A1) Start-up Awards in 2016.