Trip Planning Sites are Rich Areas for Innovation

What is the difference between the various trip planning websites and what value are they to consume

. August 28, 2009

AUGUST 26, 2009 - Google recently launched City Tours which generates suggested itineraries for destinations around the world. It allows users to customize their schedules according to trip duration and points of interest.

Trip planning tools, such as City Tours, have received a lot of attention recently and are one of the fastest growing areas of online travel. Online trip planning was a very complex process with many different steps; inspiration, discovery decisions on air, activities, location, lodging, etc. Trip planning sites aim to revolutionize this process and streamline how travelers plan and share trips, by generating personalized destination advice, guides and itineraries.

EyeforTravel recently interviewed the CEOs from leading trip planning sites TravelMuse, NileGuide, Triporati, Tripology and TripIt. We asked what value these sites provide consumers? How do the various sites differ? And what is the future for this category? Will trip planning sites see enough investment and adoption to survive long-term?

"It's going to be a very interesting area to watch over the next 12 to 18 months", said Gregg Brockway, CEO, TripIt. "Some companies will break out of the pack and we'll also see a lot of flameout."

All of these CEO's will be addressing this issue in person at EyeforTravel's Travel Distribution Summit, being held on September 16-17 in Chicago. For more information click here: http://events.eyefortravel.com/tdsusa/revenue-management/agenda.asp

TripIt combines all of a travelers trip details across a multitude of online travel sites and generates a master itinerary which can then easily be shared with colleagues and friends. This tool particularly appeals to the business traveler. "There are a lot of booking options and a lot of travel advice tools, but not much out there to help travelers organize their trip details and share them with friends and colleagues and ultimately have better trips," said TripIt's Brockway.

"Trip Planning is a rich area for innovation," Brockway added. "The first wave of online travel was about travelers buying on their own. The second wave was about user-generated content and information-sharing. Now we have so many places to find and book travel it is becoming overwhelming and the process needs to be simplified. Trip planning tools have been created in response to the growing frustration in managing the information overload."

TripIt is not a lead generation site and does not sell travel. "It's unique because it's an open platform that can help people, wherever they have booked," Brockway said. "Our open API means we can pull information together no matter where the user has booked."

Diane Clarkson, Travel Industry Analyst for Forrester Research, commented, "TripIt is one of the most interesting because it is based on the pinnacles of necessity; it's unique and it's valuable for consumers."

Triporati and Tripology have a very different function to TripIt. These two sites primarily help people who don't know where to go; they could be described as the web 2.0 spin on the traditional travel agent. "We help people decide the where," said Jim Hornthal, CEO of Triporati. "When people travel they dream, plan and go. And they have to make decisions on where to go, who to go with, when to go, etc. and this is where trip planning sites like Triporati provide value to the customer."

On Triporati the user selects and ranks up to 10 destination attributes from a list of 62 . These personal preferences are then matched against the ratings of a team of 70 travel experts, travel writers who have contributed to top guide books like Fodors. Their rankings and ratings have been captured for over 1,500 locations , and Triporati's matching algorithm generates a map with customized recommendations. "The collective wisdom of our experts recommends the best places in the world to go, often places that you wouldn't have otherwise considered," Hornthal said.

Hornthal added, "Triporati's partners, like AAA are able to also offer one-to-one help, matching a user's preferences with a local AAA travel agent who is best suited to their needs. Some customers prefer the human touch; they want a little hand holding, and our AAA partners are uniquely able to provide that personalized service. "

Triporati also has an application on Facebook which allows users to identify those friends who have the same interests.

Tripology is a lead generation site which requires users to fill in an extensive form, which is then handed to a few of their 13,000 travel specialists, based on their area of expertise. These travel specialists buy the lead information and recommend suitable trips. These travel specialists help you through the whole process and provide someone to speak to. "People still want someone to talk to a human being they can trust." said John Peters, CEO of Tripology.

Peters agreed with Brockway that consumers are feeling overwhelmed. "There is so much information out there that you can spend weeks researching your trip, our website is for people who are uncertain on what to do next," he added. "Until now the offline and online travel worlds have been segregated, but sites like Tripology bring these two worlds together."

"Up until now the online consumer had two options," Peters said. "They could either do their own research online, which requires a substantial amount of effort or they can use an online agency. But for trips that are a little different, trip planning sites can be very useful to customers. "We are trending towards older customers who are looking for trips which are out of the ordinary or have specific requirements."

On the future of this category, Peters said "I think anything to do with travel will do well online. The challenge is long-term viability. Tripology's business model is simple lead generation but as for the Trip Inspiration sites, we've yet to see true monetization, but I am confident that this is just around the corner and a few trip planning sites will emerge as success stories."

Forrester's Clarkson added, "Sites like this are interesting because they fill in the gap for people who don't know where to go. This mimics the role of a traditional travel agent and so far online travel has struggled to fill this gap."

NileGuide's has differentiated itself by pulling the components of the travel lifecycle together under one roof. The company's mission is to be a one-stop-shop for trip planning, providing users with personalized travel recommendations, tools to organize the recommendations and an integrated booking platform, plus giving the users a PDF or mobile guide and take with them. This "guide-to-go" is dynamically generated and is completely unique to each user.

Unlike TripIt which is focused on logistics, NileGuide has a huge amount of rich destination content. "We're unique because we aggregate content form a variety of sources and then organize it to cut through the clutter," said Josh Steinitz, CEO of NileGuide. "With local guides also contributing unique content there's a human element too." He also explained that by focusing on content NileGuide can benefit by attracting customers through search.

On the future of trip planning sites, Steinitz said, "There will be a handful of high quality businesses emerging from this category. But I think smaller players will be snapped up if they fail to generate enough value and investment."

Steinitz said he sees an opportunity for online travel agencies to take advantage of this growth. "The traditional online travel agencies are looking for ways to differentiate themselves in the face of meta-search and customers booking direct," he explained, "and one of the ways they can do this is by increasing the amount of content on their site. This will increase engagement, improve their value proposition, and improve SEO."

Kevin Fliess, CEO of TravelMuse, said, "Fundamentally, leisure travelers begin from one of two starting points-those who know where they want to go and those who don't. A complete solution has to account for both scenarios." TravelMuse lets undecided travelers discover destinations through its Inspiration Finder and enables collaborative trip planning through the TravelMuse Planner.

Fliess added, "The other key tenet is openness. It's no longer acceptable for travel Web sites to exist as walled gardens. Consumers naturally visit multiple Web sites when planning a trip, but struggle to organize all that information." TravelMuse lets consumers explore the Web-without leaving TravelMuse-and save any interesting Web pages directly to their trip plan.

Fliess agreed with Brockway and Steinitz on where the industry is headed: "The market is not without its challenges at the moment, but the future is bright for this emerging category. Those sites that deliver the most value and have the most traction will emerge as go-to Web solutions. Many others will exit through consolidation."

Josh Steinitz, CEO, Nile Guide and Scott Hintz VP Business Development for TripIt will also be speaking at EyeforTravel's first Mobile Strategies for Travel conference, which will be held alongside the Travel Distribution Summit on September 16-17 in Chicago. For more information click here: http://events.eyefortravel.com/tdsusa/mobile-travel/agenda.asp

Business Contact: