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Top Travel 2.0 Sites

New and innovative travel startups are cropping up all the time, but if history is any indication, only a handful will survive. I recently asked a group of travel industry gurus what up and coming sites really stood out for them, and which ones they actually used.

Before we jump into the list, I’ve asked Joe Buhler, Social Web Marketing Consultant for PhoCusWright, to help define what we mean when we say “travel 2.0″. Here’s his take:

The terms travel 2.0 and web 2.0 have been around for awhile now and are sometimes called the participatory web. There are a fast growing number of people contributing their own content and joining the ongoing conversation about any possible subject imaginable. This active participation can be observed in the travel space as well with the number of blogs, Facebook pages, YouTube videos and Twitter accounts literally exploding onto the scene and at a very rapid pace. There is an over-abundance of travel information available on the web and it seems to continue to grow exponentially. The result is very often frustration with this information overload. How to find the relevant bits has become a challenge and the present search based process leaves a lot to be desired. Most of the established major travel players are stuck in travel 1.0 mode and keep focusing on the transaction and the related focus on offering the lowest price and the cheapest deal. The transaction, however, is only about 5% of the activity, the other 95% is what’s happening pre-purchase in what can best be described as the Dream – Learn – Plan process, the in-trip Experience and post-trip Share phases.

Recent market entrants are now offering innovative solutions addressing the issues associated with that 95%. Surprisingly, these innovators often don’t have a travel industry background but approach the issues from the viewpoint of the frustrated traveler. This seems to be an advantage as they are not trapped in the conventional thinking mode. To achieve future growth the solutions companies like Uptake, Travelmuse, Tripbase, Planeteye and Where I’ve Been are offering need to become mainstream. Today’s keyword based search paradigm needs to evolve into one of intelligent agents capturing the semantics and personal preferences, resulting in the presentation of limited but truly relevant choices. This will allow travelers to make smart decisions and a welcome side benefit will be that the present focus on the lowest price will move to the discovery of the most suitable trip solution.

Joe frames the problem — and the opportunity — of the online travel space very well. So what new travel startup is going to change the face of travel? Only time will tell, but Joe mentions a few with potential. Here are the rest of the travel 2.0 site recommendations from people who live and breathe the travel industry:

Troy Thompson
Travel 2.0 blog

Great question, thanks for asking. Well, I, like most of you use a pretty standard set of sites when traveling: Kayak for booking, Oyster for (some) hotels, Dopplr for finding other travelers and Twitter for staying in touch. In fact, I could argue that Twitter is the answer to this question regardless of industry vertical. How can you travel without it? But, for today, let’s try to find a hidden gem in the rough and rocky terrain that is travel 2.0.

foursquare – Let’s categorize this one under local travel for now. Part game, part social networking site and a lot of fun. The idea is simple, yet has the potential to break through the review site clutter. Sign up, find your city and ‘check-in’ each time you visit a location…restaurant, building, bowling alley, etc…each ‘check-in’ earns you points, badges and the ultimate prize of being named mayor of your location. Two quotes I love from the site: “think urban mix tape” and “We’re not looking for reviews here…more ‘go here, do this’ or ‘eat here now’ tips.” Plus, they have an iPhone app, perfect for people on the go. A small and simple site that just needs a little more participation (critical mass!) to take off.

Tom Botts
Hudson Crossing

Voyage.tv – These guys are doing amazing things with video – really bringing experiences to life. They also have a cool twist in that they are in 30M+ households on cable – talk about converging mediums.

FlightMemory – Great site for the map geeks in all of us to keep track of where we’ve flown, how far we’ve flown etc and then display it.

FlyerTalk – The granddaddy of all frequent-flyer program discussion boards. Talk about a lively, active community. Unreal.

Josiah Mackenzie
Hotel Marketing Strategies

TVtrip – Video will play a big role in the future of travel websites, this site does it better than most.

Webcams.travel – For the same reason: travelers like to see what a place *really* looks like.

TwiHotels – Twitter is being used by more and more travelers, and this is an interesting concept that connects people.

Wikitravel – The power of what I call ‘guestsourcing’ at work.

Guillaume Thevenot
Hotel-Blogs.com

TripKick – I like the idea that you can get information about individual rooms at specific hotels and ask specifically for a room number to ensure you have the best view, the best space and so on.

Joobili – Because I sometimes need inspiration about where I should go next on holidays. Quite a few new ventures took the “inspiration” model forward but Joobili with its super simple timeline homepage has really nailed it.

Flickr – You’ve come back from holidays and you realized some of your pictures haven’t come close to what you would expect. No problem, maybe other people took better pictures where you had been and you can include them in your diaporama pretending you took them.

Michael Hraba
Hraba Hospitality Consulting

Uptake – I LOVE the look and feel of UpTake. A lot. It aggregates from multiple review sources, and relays a very accurate, simple profile about the properties.

Seatguru – This site is a life saver. Knowing what you are in for on the plane ride is massively helpful, and at 6′6″ it is important to be able to gauge whether the upgrade is worth it, or vital.

Kayak – This is the single greatest travel shopping site. Nothing compares, nothing can touch it.

Flickr – The time wasting side of me adores Flickr’s search, and zoning out on Flickr’s travel photos.

Yelp – Finally… I fought myself… but Yelp. If you check out my blog you will see me rail on that quite often – I loathe it at times. Much of it is sophomoric, pedantic, and narcissistic. That being said, within 5 minutes of setting down in almost any town I can find out the best place to get fast dry cleaning for the spilled coffee during my flight, the hippest, non-tourist trap dinner spot to take a client, find where to get the best sushi for my lunch the following day….. and a cool shop near a post office to get some errands done. It constantly amazes me how functional a travel tool it is.

Posted in Startup, Travel & Tips, Travel Industry and Business.

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By Jeffrey Talajic – August 11, 2009

Google Maps and Lonely Planet on the iPhone

Google Maps recently announced via their blog that they’ve added places of interest directly onto the maps themselves. And if you click on a place Google will call up the relevant Wikipedia article. Here’s a example of this in action with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art:

Google Maps San Francisco Museum of Modern Art


Pretty slick. But that screenshot is from the web, how good does this work on a mobile? I decided to test it out head to head with Lonely Planet’s San Francisco app for the iPhone. What’s better for the iPhone tourist, the Lonely Planet app or Google Maps?


Here’s Google (on the left) and Lonely Planet (on the right) on the iPhone:

Google Maps San Francisco on the iPhone Lonely Planet Map of San Francisco

Which one do you prefer? If you find find Lonely Planet’s map a bit cluttered, you can filter out the stuff that doesn’t interest you:

Lonely Planet Map Filter



I find Google’s 3D buildings and integrated labeling to be more aesthetically pleasing, but Lonely Planet undeniably provides more information. Furthermore, when you touch Lonely’s Planet’s icons you’re rewarded with some great info. In the case of the Museum of Modern Art, everything you need to know is just a touch away: hours, price, phone number, and if you scroll down there’s a nice detailed description.


Lonely Planet's Info for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Lonely Planet's Description of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Unfortunately, Google doesn’t currently offer any such information right now. While on the web they provide the Wikipedia article we saw above, the iPhone version doesn’t include any bells and whistles. Is Google ready to displace city guide apps for the iPhone? Eventually, my money is on yes, but right now the answer is a resounding no.

Posted in Travel & Tips, Travel Industry and Business.

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By Jeffrey Talajic – August 7, 2009

Crowdsourcing Content for Destination Websites

Should tourism websites still bother producing their own content? I’m thinking specifically of DMO sites whose difficult job it is to increase the amount of visitors to their destination. High quality content such as videos and images help sell the virtues of a place, but are definitely expensive to produce. And because it’s important to the keep that content fresh, it’s an ongoing expense. Is there a better way?

There are millions of people traveling the world right now, taking photos and shooting videos. How much of that content makes its way online? A lot. According to Wikipedia, 20 hours of YouTube footage is uploaded every minute. And Flickr actually provides a real-time feed of their photo upload numbers:

Flickr Uploads Per Minute

That works out to 3,407,464,800 photos and 10,512,000 hours of video a year. With that much content available it’s inevitable that DMOs will adopt it more and more. Here’s a recent example I came across on the Tips from the T-List blog:

Natalie Lucier went whale watching in Labrador and captured this amazing video:

Not long after Natalie uploaded it she was approached by Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism who requested permission to use it on their site. Natalie wanted to share her video (that’s why it was on YouTube in the first place afterall!) and the tourism board is helping her do that. The tourism board is always looking for great new content, Natalie is now an important contributor. That’s a win-win.

(Tip of the hat to Todd Lucier for inspiring this post.)

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By Jeffrey Talajic – August 4, 2009

Openplaces in 13 Sentences

Paul Graham’s essay Startups in 13 Sentences is a great resource for any startup looking for a recipe for success. How does Openplaces stack up against his 13 points? I ran us through the list.

1. Pick good cofounders.

Paul writes: “Cofounders are for a startup what location is for real estate.” I agreed to join Openplaces because I thought hitching my boat to Frederic Lalonde’s oceanliner was a good idea. It’s all about the track record: before Openplaces, Fred raised $7 million in venture capital for his last startup, Newtrade Technologies, and then sold it to Expedia, where he stayed on and signed up the likes of Marriot, Hilton, Hyatt, and many others to their Direct Connect platform. He then proceeded to help Expedia acquire TripAdvisor, Hotels.com, and China’s #1 OTA, eLong. He’s been on both sides of the acquisition fence; I can’t think of anyone more qualified to run a startup. Meanwhile, Joost Ouwerkerk helped build and implement Newtrade and Expedia’s hotel supply connectivity engine–if anyone understands building large scale web applications, it’s him.

Pick good cofounders? Check.

2. Launch fast.

Openplaces.org has been live since March, but had been in stealth mode for over a year. Why so long? In the words of our CEO: “mixing Information Retrieval with Grid Computing is kinda hard.” So while we didn’t launch right away, we definitely agree with Paul when he writes: “Launching teaches you what you should have been building.” Iterate iterate iterate is our mantra, and releases with new features and bug fixes are getting pushed out the door all the time.

3. Let your idea evolve.

The idea is simple: make planning a trip suck less. We do it through building better search technology and user generated content. With such a simple idea I can’t say it evolves a lot, but the implementation of that idea is changing all the time.

4. Understand your users.

We almost have as many analytics people as we have developers. Why? Because we’re obsessed with our users! (In a good way.) We’re also our own target audience–frustrated trip planners. Planning a trip is supposed to be fun, we’re trying to make sure it is.

5. Better to make a few users love you than a lot ambivalent.

I think we fail on this one–we pretty much expect our users to feel ambivalent about us at this stage. Our product isn’t where we want it to be, but we’re getting there.

6. Offer surprisingly good customer service.

We’re working on it! Most of the team is available on Twitter, but we’re often too busy to respond right away.

7. You make what you measure.

We’re metrics obsessed, no question (see item #4). We spend just as much time testing as we do iterating. We’re test obsessed.

8. Spend little.

Some startups are famous for their foosball tables, offsite retreats, and brand new Macbook Pros for every employee. But that’s not us. On my first day an Ubuntu box was waiting for me, put together with spare computer parts. We’re lean and mean.

9. Get ramen profitable.

Canada is a “hightech ramen heaven.” We have lower labour costs. And there’s the magical SR&ED Tax Incentive Program. Writing software in Canada is consistently competitive to outsourcing to India.

10. Avoid distractions.

There are no side projects going on at Openplaces. Our VC doesn’t ask for monthly reports. We don’t focus on “startup partnerships” that rarely pan out. We don’t travel to shows and conferences. We don’t have a controller or an HR Manager. We don’t even do weekly team meetings. We’re 100% focused.

11. Don’t get demoralized.

We hire based on two criteria: smarts, and the ability to get stuff done. If you’re constantly getting stuff done, it’s hard to get demoralized. Especially if you’re smart about it.

12. Don’t give up.

That’s just not in our DNA. Besides, what else is there to do except a startup?

13. Deals fall through.

This is why we don’t focus on deals right now, we need a great product first.

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By Jeffrey Talajic – July 28, 2009

User Generated Content is Here to Stay

There are probably just as many travel content sites as there are approaches to producing that content. TripAdvisor has user submitted reviews, new entrant Oyster is actively hiring “professional reviewers” to travel the globe and chronicle their hotel experiences, and Wikitravel gives users free reign to write, edit, and publish travel guides. These are three distinct takes on generating content, and they all have their advantages and disadvantages.

User generated content sites comes under fire every so often with allegations of fake content. (For a heated diatribe on the topic, Arthur Frommer is a good resource.) Unfortunately, this is just the reality of a competitive marketplace in a world filled with UGC. If a restaurant thinks it can bring in more people by writing a few fake reviews about itself, undoubtedly some will try. There are a few ways to combat the fake reviews. For example, TripAvisor’s CEO recently explained in an interview with Christopher Elliott that “every review is screened,” and “a team of quality assurance specialists investigates suspicious ones.” Other sites, like Expedia, only let customers with confirmed receipts post reviews. Another user generated review site, Yelp, encourages businesses to participate on the site and respond to negative criticism rather than post fake reviews to influence customers.

Wikipedia is the poster child for user generated content, and it’s interesting to note that it is rarely implicated in any faulty content accusations. But why not? Why isn’t Wikipedia being constantly overrun by petty commercial interests? Couldn’t an online music store simply edit the Michael Jackson wiki and add links to his albums on their site? Of course they could. But the community would undo it immediately. (Don’t believe me? Try it! You’ll be amazed how quickly the community will pounce on your wiki spamming.)

Wikitravel and wikiHow are other great examples of the user generated content community taking care of the content. Anyone can contribute and changes will be published live, but if the content is inaccurate, poorly written, or somehow tainted by commercial interests, you can bet that the community is going to roll back the changes. When you give control of the site to the community, they respond by treating it with respect. (Are any review sites letting their UGC community moderate the reviews? Let us know in the comments.)

Our take on User Generated Content is a little different–we actually use it to inform our search results. If a user searches for Montreal architecture, how do we know what pictures to show? Our search engine actually uses the list of all the Montreal building entries in our index to determine what to display:

Montreal Architecture Search Results

If there’s no entry for a particular building, it’s probably because it’s not interesting. Users also have the ability to actually add new buildings (or anything else) to our index, so our search results actually become more relevant when users submit content.

With so many sites utilizing so many approaches, one thing is for sure: user generated content is here to stay.

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By Jeffrey Talajic – July 23, 2009

Top 10 Travel Industry Blogs

Here are my picks, in no particular order:

Dennis Schaal Blog
Dennis is a one man update machine, often with 10+ new posts a week. He usually offers the first (and often some of the best) travel commentary on the day’s latest travel industry scandals and developments.

Elliott.org
Christopher Elliott is a unique blend of industry expert and consumer advocate. He breaks news, interviews travel industry executives, and offers everyday travel tips.

Tripso
Tripso is written by a group of travel journalists veterans each with their own niche. There’s a lot of content here with a good mix of topics, and gets my vote for best designed blog on this list.

The BOOT (The Business of Online Travel)
Tim Hughes is a VP at Orbitz, and while he doesn’t weigh in on his day job, he does bring a wealth of industry knowledge to bear on the conversation. His ongoing interviews with travel startups are always a good read. Check out his interviews with Uptake CEO Yen Lee, Tripbase CEO Reuven Levitt, and TripSay board member Alfonso Castellano.

Travolution blog
UK-based, the Travolution blog is a good bet for more Eurocentric travel commentary. This blog doesn’t pull any punches, so don’t expect any corporate sucking up here.

T4 Blog (Travel & Tourism Technology Trends)
Run by the indefatigable Stephen Joyce, the T4 Blog is a great resource for learning about emerging technologies impacting the tourism sector. Includes great tips for leveraging technology to improve your online marketing.

Travel 2.0 Blog
The name says it all: subscribe to this blog to stay up to date on the newest travel resources online and the evolving role that social media is playing in the industry.

Musings on Travel eCommerce
Alex Bainbridge weighs in on travel eCommerce and social media developments. You can usually expect lively discussion in the comments.

PhoCusWright Connect
This blog provides the usual high standard we have come to expect from PhoCusWright and also aggregates some of the best content from other industry blogs. If you only have time for one travel blog, this is the one to pick.

Hudson Crossing Blog
Tom Botts knows his stuff and frequently comments on the issues of the day. Most recently he was a VP at Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, and before that worked at Hotwire and Delta, so you know he knows this industry inside out.

Your favorite travel industry blog not listed? Let me know in the comments!

Posted in Travel Industry and Business.

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By Jeffrey Talajic – July 16, 2009

476,996 places!

We’ve been crawling the web for new places, hotels, activities, and attractions for while now, but until today they haven’t been available on openplaces.org.  The hard part is merging duplicates: knowing when two or more similar listings (for a hotel, for instance) refer to the same place.  Today we finally succeeded at ironing out the last known bugs in our system and have added more than 350,000 new places to the site.  Over the next few months, we’ll be adding tons more.

We’re also working on gathering more useful content about each place: reviews, articles, blog posts and links.  Stay tuned.

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By Frederic Lalonde – May 29, 2009

Search Screencast

Here is a first screencast that showcases our travel search technology. It focuses on the land parts of a trip: activities, hotels, etc. We are hard at work adding flights and other transportation to the engine, along with detailed pricing. More on this soon.

If you happen to like British Reggae, make sure your sound is on…

Openplaces SF Screencast from Frederic Lalonde on Vimeo.

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By Frederic Lalonde – March 25, 2009

Lights on.

You could say that we have been quiet since we first posted this page.  That would be a polite way of putting it. This is not so much the result of a clever stealth strategy as it is a consequence of the ridiculous quantity of work we created for ourselves. As it turns out, mixing Information Retrieval with Grid Computing is kinda hard.  Who knew?

We are slowly clawing our way toward launching openplaces.org.  So, starting today, I will be posting regular updates. Let’s get things started properly: here is a first screencast of our search techonology.

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By Frederic Lalonde – March 8, 2009

Why online travel is broken

Every start-up trying to launch a disruptive technology is going to try to convince you that their billion dollar industry is completely broken and that they have found the only way to fix it. In order to prove this, the savvy entrepreneur will usually quote a single obscure and dubiously-sourced statistic taken completely out of its original context. This is a time-honoured tradition that dates back to the early days of the internet, when Valley companies would raise one hundred million dollars to “fix the problems of pet food distribution”.

I see no reason to break with tradition, so imagine my joy when Mark Skapinker sent me a link to Online Media Daily’s article about how online travel is… wait for it… completely broken!

“eMarketer is pegging online travel sales to top $105 billion this year in the U.S., up 12% from 2007. But while the dollar amount is increasing, fewer Americans are actually booking their trips online.”

“In 2007, only 55% of travelers booked their trips online, down from 63% the previous year.”

“According to eMarketer senior analyst Jeffrey Grau, it’s because travelers are fed up with the buggy, antiquated booking and planning systems of online travel agencies (OTAs)”

It doesn’t get any sweeter than that.

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By Frederic Lalonde – August 27, 2008