18 Months Later - How Are They Doing?

It has been awhile since I lasted posted a review -- been a busy summer and start to the new academic year. Even when I am not actively blogging, I still file away emails that I receive that are Travel 2.0 related to, hopefully, review when I have more time. Most of these are from PR people wanting to promote their website and products.

So what I decided to do today was to look back at the oldest ones that I had files away and see which of them is still of interest today. These three were all promoted to me in April 2007, about 18 months ago.


71 Miles - is an early staycation website, founded before the concept of staycation became popularized. Its beta version was focused on Northern California, and its plans in April 2007 were to go national in "the coming months." That obviously did not happen, as it is still Northern California based, and they do not seem to talk about going national any longer. And they seem to be looking for advertisers on their homepage.


The State of Oregon's GoSeeOregon.com website, which is somewhat of a traditional state travel site, except that you need to join the site to see most of the information. If you register you get access to:

• Tips for more than 300 destinations in Oregon and over 90,000 others worldwide
• Connect with thousands of fellow travelers from all continents
• Rate and review hotels, restaurants, attractions, and more
• Search the database for members with similar interests, find top rated places, the most respected users or the most valuable tips
• Customize your own passport page and track all your travel

Destinations (sort of global - only a handful of sites listed), Tips and Member profiles are available without registering -- they apparently have about 3,000 registered members -- not hugely successful for a state tourism site, I would guess. I think most of these options are available elsewhere, and since I am not planning a trip to Oregon in the foreseeable future, I did not register. But for anyone who goes to Oregon a lot, say if you had a second home there, this might be worthwhile. The site was created by GoSeeTell.com, which is based in Portland, Oregon, and does not seem to have any other similar products. [UPDATE 2Sept08: There is also a GoSeeArizona.com site, which was mentioned in a comment, below.]

In my opinion, 3000 registered members is not necessarily a huge success. With a little effort they could possibly get close to that number on Facebook. I think the issue of registering is a barrier. Only those people who are most enthusiastic to share and discuss Oregon will likely register. For potential visitors, the Tips section is probably the most useful part of the site and it is good that they make this available without needing to register. So there are probably many times as many users of the site than just those who register.

TravelOregon.com, the state's official travel site, has a Travel Journal tool where registered users can take notes of places they want to see, but they do not have the community tools that GoSeeOregon has. In addition, they only refer people via a very small link at the bottom of their site, to the GoSeeOregon website, so they are not really making full use of GoSeeOregon.com, with which they are apparently still affiliated.


Tripwiser.com launched in April 2007 and was described in the email I received back then as being "devoted to baby boomers traveling in the United States with families. The idea was to take project management out of trip planning and help people collaborate and enjoy travel preparation as much as possible." Its primary feature, in my opinion, is the ability to post your trip itinerary and, optionally, share it with others. You can also comment on the places you went and share photos -- sort of like a personal travel blog. There is no discussion forum, and you cannot comment directly on postings, though you can suggest updates to a post. So it is a lot less open than TripAdvisor.com or 43Places.com.

It is hard to tell how many users TripWiser.com currently has. My impression is that is is OK, but not huge. There seem to be user trips to most of the more popular corners of the world. The site, however, is full of other information from a variety of different sources -- including commercial tour operators. This form of advertising is relatively less obtrusive than what one finds on sites such as TripAdvisor.com. Though it can be sneaky in that way.

In Summary

Of the 18 month old sites reviewed here, TripWiser.com appears to be the most successful. That could be because it is the broadest in its geographic market, covering the globe, instead of only one state or urban region. It could also be because it is the most rich in the user generated tools that it provides -- namely, allowing users to create itineraries that can be private or shared. It does not have a discussion forum, which is a shortcoming, I think. However, the information provided -- a mix of user-generated content and commercial content -- is presented in an easy to access and use manner. Perhaps this is better suited to baby-boomers who just want information and are less interested in active site participation.

Some Travel Planning Tools

OK, so this is not all of the sites covered are are new, though a couple of them are. But I think it is worth visiting and commenting on the more established sites, instead of just covering the newest travel sites here.

Forbes.com has an article on titled "Travel Websites Get Personal" by Wendy Tanaka, which is accompanied by a slide show of Seven Top Sites for Planning Your Vacation. If you hate those slides shows as much as I do, here is a quick list of the seven sites that they list, along with my own comments on each:

1. Kayak.com - airline, hotel and vacation booking site, often finds the best deals in comparative studies - This is the one that I use the most on this list, though I normally enter it via the multi-site search engines of BookingBuddy.com or OneTime.com.
   
   
2. TripAdvisor.com - massive database of user-generated review, mostly of hotels - I use TripAdvisor occasionally to get information on hotels in places that I am very unfamiliar with. Unfortunately, I find the often conflicting reviews of the same place very confusing!
   
   
3. IgoUgo.com - user reviews of destinations, hotels, restaurants, etc., more like blog entries, now part of Travelocity.com. I used IgoUgo recently to plan daily activities in Siem Reap, Cambodia. I was too cheap to buy a guidebook for the short trip that I took there and looked at several sites like IgoUgo for tips on what to do and see, which I then printed out and took with me.
   
   
4. TripIt.com - automatically generates guides for trip itineraries that you enter - I tried this once but found the results too general and diverse and not well suited to my interests. If you are interested in this approach, you might want to try NileGuide.com, which is a new site that also creates a trip itinerary around your destination and interests. It currently only covers selected sites outside the US, but I think that will change over time.
   
   And there is also Ving.se's Trip Finder (image above), which does the same thing and is a 2008 Webby Award nominee for Travel, along with several other sites listed here. (Note that the the preference scales on Trip Finder are also offered on Tripbase.com, which I reviewed in June 2007.)
   
   
   
   
5. VibeAgent.com - and more user reviews, plus a Q&A section, and links to real-life Travel Agents - I have not used this site and looking at it I am not sure that I, personally, would find its features that useful. Others might be different, though.
   
   
6. Farecast.com - airlines and hotels, attempts to forecast future fares for mostly US cities (good luck with that these days of bankrupt airlines and sky-high oil prices!) - They are slowly expanding their forecasting coverages, but it basically does not work for international travel. Even for domestic US, I find the results of limited use as it cannot guarantee a certain future price (though I think there is a way to do that for a price).
   
   
7. InsideTrip.com - airline fares, but with a Trip Quality Score based on lost luggage, on-time departures, legroom, and flight duration - based on what you indicate as important (US only) - This beta site is the newest on the list and I have not used it, though the concept is interesting. Here is a screenshot of its results - the big number is the quality score, the bars on the left are where you adjust your preferences:
   
   
   

When I plan my trips (which I have been doing a lot of lately), I start from a Hubpages.com site that I created called "My Favorite Travel Websites". Here is a screenshot of that site (the photo of me and my daughter in Hawaii is from over 25 years ago):


On this Hubpage I post anything that I think I might use in planning my own personal and professional travels. Do I use everything that is there -- nope, but I might, some day. And even with this fairly comprehensive list, I often seem to find myself using new and different websites every time I plan a new trip. Go figure...

Tourist Attractions Galore (US only) at HappyMappy.com

As a geographer, I have a bias toward mapping applications that relate to Web 2.0 and Travel 2.0. So even though I get a lot of links to Travel 2.0 websites in my inbox, and even though I really should be reading student term papers right now, I did mention this new site (still in beta), in part because of its simplicity and mostly because of it potential usefulness for travelers in the US.

HappyMappy.com is a map of tourist attractions in the US. (Sorry, rest of the world.) Attractions include: "history, arts, recreation, nature, science, parks, sports, theater, concerts, nightlife & activities." It is basically a mash-up of Google Maps and Yahoo! Local, with some added information and functionality. At each zoom level HappyMappy will show up to 100 of the most popular attractions. It is unclear just how popularity is determined.

Checking the attractions around Flagstaff, Arizona, I found the results to be quite comprehensive, and there were a couple of items listed that I was personally not aware of. It was not perfect, however, as it included a couple of motels (not really tourist attractions) and places on the Northern Arizona University campus that I thought were a bit questionable. For example, the Du Bois Center is tagged with: Concert Entertainment Live Entertainment Live Music Music Nightlife Venue. However, it is mostly a food outlet for students and a conference center with meeting rooms and an auditorium that may, on a very infrequent occasion, have some evening event that is open to the public. In addition, as student recreation center is listed that is not open to the public.

In addition, downtown Flagstaff, especially on Route 66 (US Highway 89/180), has a lot of tourist arts/gifts/souvenir shops, but only a couple are listed. And I wonder how well they will be able to keep this information current given the relatively high business turnover in this sector. Finally, urban districts and scenic landscapes are attractions, as well. But these do not show up on the HappyMappy maps. While it might be possible to identify downtown Flagstaff as a tourism hot spot, based on the large number of pin points there, the historic hotels along Route 66 as not so well identifiable.

Also, I was not able to save my points of interest and maps either in Firefox 3 (beta) or on IE 7 after I registered on the site. I would think this kind of problem would be mostly resolved in a beta release, but I guess not this time.

HappyMappy reminds me of VeniVidiWiki.eu - which is a pin map showing links to tourist attractions around the world, but which also emphasizes videos and photos more, and text descriptions of the attractions less than does HappyMappy. VeniVidiWiki also allows users to add additional sites to their database, though there is no social networking related to that. And there is also Simpatigo.com which links the attractions to an itinerary route -- though that makes it more complicated, as well. I covered VeniVidiWiki.eu before here and Simpatigo.com before here.

Personal Travel Search - Simple Is Best

The Travel-In-Norway.com website has a very simple, Google-based travel search site that works very nicely!

This is the search interface, on which I typed "Singapore":


And here are the results for my Singapore search. Each link basically takes you to a Google page with links to the topic, which, of course, is also a very clean interface, of course. With all the often complicated Web 2.0 stuff out there, simple is like a breath of fresh air.

From Tourist to Traveler - Educating visitors about Angkor Wat

A friend of mine, Tim Winter, sent me a link to his new website about travel, tourism and heritage in Cambodia, with an emphasis on Angkor Wat <http://www.postconflictheritage.com>. The website is essentially intended to support and expand upon his recent book on the same topic, which can be found on the website. The site also includes links to recent news stories related to tourism and heritage issues in Cambodia.

While a lot of Web 2.0 tends to focus on practical tools for organizing trips and finding the best deals from insiders. At best, they provide users with information on must see attractions.

However, tourists are part of the tourism economy -- which is generally considered the largest part of the global service economy, and has huge impacts on host destinations. Few tourists fully understand their role in this tourism economy, and how they are shaping and changing the destinations that they visit.

Website like this one on Cambodia help to bridge this gap between being a leisure tourist and an aware traveler. Good job, Tim!

One Month of Travel 2.0 Websites

On average, I receive about two emails a week announcing new Travel 2.0 websites. I know that they mostly come from PR people, but some seem more genuine than others, which can border on spam. I find most of them of some interest, but only now and then am I smitten enough to be drawn away from my other activities to write a review.

However, I also know that just because I may not be overly excited about a new website, does not mean that other people might not be. So in deference to a presenting a balanced picture of Travel 2.0, this blog posting is summary of the websites that have been recommended to me in in the past month (not listed in any special order), along with my impressions.

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Pariscontest.ning.com - A Travel Contest to Build User Content

From surveys that I have heard about, after the US, the top international destination that people in China want to visit in France. Ruyi-ParisHotel.com is a website for Chinese traveling to Paris, and elsewhere in Europe. However, they are also running a contest in English on the free social website buider, Ning.com. It is one of the smaller contests that I have seen. You can win a US$99 gift certificate to Amazon.com if you submit a suggestion on how to visit Paris on $99 or less a day (1 meal, 1 hotel, 1 activity). Sounds like an inexpensive promotional effort that could gain them some useful information. I found their use of Ning.com particularly of interest, since I am a active participant on that site (see here, for example). - Ruyi Travel Blog (blog in Chinese) - English - Contest Promo - Ruyi-ParisHotels (in Chinese)

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Destination Meta-Guide.com 2.0

This is not a new website, but it has apparently undergone some rennovations to make it more of a “daily green travel newspaper” for virtually every country on Earth. This site is for people who want to know what contemporary issues that are really going on in a country, beyond the general guidebook information. In addition to basic visitor information, it provides NGO and UN information and "the latest green travel news." A lot of destination information and definitely more for the serious traveler than the purely recreational one.

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Travelwebdir.com -Travel Web Directory

This site claims to only include sites that have been selected by real humans as being the best in each of their many categories. It kind of reminds me of the old Yahoo directories (do they still exist somewhere?), and as such feels more like Web 1.0 -- find a category and see the websites or online article. It is apparently still very new and many of the categories (such as travel podcasts) are empty. In addition, the email I received stated: "You can add your travel related site or your travel articles for free to our directory: Don't miss this awesome opportunity to gain visibility and pagerank at once!" It is easy to submit a website link. They only require that it be a "quality" site and that the site link back to the Travel Web Directory. There was no definition of "quality," however. Definitely a beta site with a lot more work to do.

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eBookers.es - Mobile phone phrase books

For 4 Euros you can download a 17 language phrasebook from the Spain-based eBookers.es. The website is entirely in Spanish, since English is one of the 17 languages (and the PR announcement was in English), it should work for us Anglophones. There are 200 traveler-related phrases that are both shown in text and vocalized on the phone. Since I travel mostly in Asia, Manadarin Chinese and Japanese are included, though Bahasa-Malay/Indonesia is not. In addition, my HTC phone is not on the list of phones that the phrasebook will work on. And finally, have you actually ever bought one those little pocket phrase books? I have, over the years, but I have never actually pulled one out and used it.

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SegnaloItalia.it - Digg-like voting system for Italian tourism

This website focuses on alternative accommodations, such as B&B and farm stays, plus events, and touring routes. Places and establishments are rated and reviewed, all in Italian, from what I saw. And there is a Google map showing the distribution, and you can see who has voted for what sites. If you know a little Italian, this could be a great resources for seeing the "real Italy."

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Extravigator.com - Discussion forum for luxury travel

The website describes itself as "Haute Travel Talk" and "Where sophisticted travelers go to discuss first class experiences." Categoried includ hotels, dining, spas, shopping, and more. Since I cannot afford traveling first class, this is not a site that I find much interest in. (I am, however, a charter subscriber to Budget Travel magazine -- I have 10 years of back issues.)

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Chokti.com - Multimedia destination information

To me, Chokit is sort of a YouTube portal for travel destinations. They link to audio (podcasts?), videos, photos, maps and journals, and users can upload their own material and aggregate them for specific destinations, which can then be presented on a personal or business website. I am not sure how the latter works. When I browse the site I see about 1300 resources listed -- most of which seem to be videos of the US and Europe. There was only one for Southeast Asia. Some a linked from Youtube and similar sites, while others were apparently uploaded by amateur users. There are quite a few other travel video sites out there, and I guess one difference with Chokti is the ability to add other multimedia files -- though I did not see any browsing around Europe, Asia and North America. I also found the interface somewhat cumbersome.

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Nile Cruise Podcast

This is supposed to be a weekly podcast. They have three episodes up, and the last one was posted on Oct 22. It is a good podcast, but hmmm, they seem to be a few weeks behind -- unless they have already podfaded. (Three podcasts is a very common podfading break point.)
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Tripology.com - Connecting travelers with travel agents

Despite of (or maybe because of) the growth in online travel, Americans are apparently returning to travel agents to some degree, in part because doing it all themselves is perceived to take too much time. On the Tripology website, travelers can submit a trip request (by destination or type of trip) and get responses from one to three travel agents from the Tripology network of over 6000 travel agents. To connect you with the best agent, the site asks a lot of information about your planned trip. While I can see that a travel agent would like much of that information to plan a trip, I can also see how the Tripology website owners could use this information for product development and marketing. I personally am uncomfortable providing a lot of information like this online. I also rarely use travel agents, though their list of travel agent myths gives some good reasons to consider one. Even though they have a blog, there is nothing else that is "Web 2.0" from the users perspective.

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This review took a lot longer to research and write up than I expected. There are some interesting efforts taking place. While quite a few of them fall short of ideal (from my perspective), I still think theat they all provide insight into the exploding landscape of Travel 2.0.

The Coming Boom in Online Travel in China

The China Web2.0 Review blog recently covered several new Chinese travel sites, comparing them to some of the more popular US travel sites.

Comparing Some New Chinese Travel Websites

The author of that blog post concludes that "Overall, None of these websites seems really impressive. They are still far behind Ctrip on user base. I think adding more innovative ideas like personalized travel plan similar to what Yahoo Travel and TripHub did may help them gaining ground in the online traveling market."


I have an article in this month's (Oct 2007) issue of the Far Eastern Economic Review. Unfortunately, my article (titled "China's Growing Wanderlust"), cannot be seen without a paid subscription. One of the topics that I cover in that article is the state of online travel in China. A few points that I make are:

• Although online travel bookings in China grew 72 percent in 2006 to over 2.75 million bookings, valued at 1.54 billion yuan (US$204 million), it pales in comparison to the US, where the online travel market generated revenues of US$83 billion in 2006.
• Chinese consumers have been wary of both online transactions and the use of credit cards (both on- and off-line).
  
• Chinese travel agents discourage online bookings because they pay higher credit card fees online (1.0%) compared to in person (0.1%). So the approach to online travel in China is to direct the public to call centers for information and bookings, and to travel agency offices for cash transaction.
  
• Successful online travel agencies in China negotiate special travel packages at favorable prices that are attractive to the middle and upper classes, who are also more willing to use credit cards and pay a little more for the convenience of online travel bookings.
  
• The biggest online travel agency, by far, in China is Ctrip.com, which accounted for 54.2% of online sales in 2006, followed by eLong.com with 17.8 percent of the market. Expedia.com owns 52 percent of eLong.com, but also has its own China website this year.
  

Although struggling now, many expect China's online travel market to explode in the coming years as more people enter the middle class and the use of plastic (credit cards) becomes more widespread. -- With trends like that, no wonder that the Shanghai stock market is booming these days!