What we find is that many of the trip planning sites out there just don’t meet all of the criteria to make trip planning easy, flexible and accurate.

I will not disclose our site at this point as we will not be fully operational for a couple of months and are focusing on Australia only, but I am happy to say that we have addressed your issues (e.g. don’t need to register, not US focused only, are unique).

I will let you know once the site is finished so that you can check it our and compare it against the rest.

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(I’m the Montpel expert on Planet Eye, I really love them.)

Have you checked out Trazzler? It’s my new favorite travel planning site of the moment. If they can control it and make sure it doesn’t get into the hands of adbot writers, they could be onto something really cool.

Otherwise, yes, I am so sick to death of busy-busy screens where you have to search for content, and once you find it it’s completely warmed over pablum.

You like Travel Advisor? Really? I find it to be just too random and weird.

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@Darren

Well, first off there are at least two pop-up boxes that come up when I go on there. And their home page just has way too much on it, I never know exactly where to look. There seems like a hundred ways to get to the information I’d want, like 19 “top this” and “featured that.”

Then when I go, for example, to the hotels for Barcelona, there is just information overload. Each hotel has 76 different rating scales, there are Google ads at a point where I think the page might end but there are hotels after that, Google ads on the side for more hotels, web links to things I didn’t ask for, recently reviewed hotels on the left side – I want clean information, I want what I asked for. It’s just way too busy for me.

The actual traveler’s advice is OK, and there is something to be said about letting reviewers write about their experience as opposed to only a rating system that doesn’t always tell the whole story. But for me personally – and this is not TA’s fault at all – I wind up reading them just for the laughs, because so many of them are so cranky and petty!

OK, enough of my travel rant

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Many of the trip planning sites are US focused because they are US sites, simple, and it easier to get hold of the content and grow organically, especially if the content is user generated.

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Like Miss Expatria, I too am sick of “busy” screens with “content overload”. When planning a trip, all I want is the info i have asked for or info very relevant to my search (e.g. links to near by activities). This is how we have designed our site.

Don’t get me wrong, we accept UGC and we provide inspiration in sections designed for that, but our site primarily focuses on accurate and helpful planning functionality/tools, not just a heap of confusing content for visitors to pull together themselves while earning themselves a migraine in the process.

There are some other planning services out there, but they are more like glorified bookmarking services which do not inform you if what you have planned is not viable (e.g. no availability, overlapping times) or let you continue to book with ease.

I would rather not go into too much detail though as it is a competitive space out there and we are not catering to your consumer audience yet .

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Many of the trip planning websites are built by people who have come fresh into the travel industry.

Although they bring some new ideas – often they underestimate the complexity that a fantastic trip planning website requires in order to be great (or are under pressure to launch prematurely).

Just because you have done a great deal of travelling doesn’t make you a great trip planning website proprietor. However, it may make you a great personal travel guide within a trip planning site.

The biggest problem these trip planning websites have is earning sufficient income in order to pay for their ongoing development…….. I would prefer to see a great trip planning website bolted onto the front of a transactional system rather than standalone – as at least monetisation is more tightly integrated.

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@Alex – The income is the rub, isn’t it? You could charge for trip planning services, but it’d have to be touted as a one stop shop and save thing, so the fee would seem nominal after someone has already forked over their credit card for flights and hotels and cars. Multiple partnerships with major travel guides, with your choice for your kind of trip and budget – Frommer’s, Lonely Planet, etc., with a large menu of every on-the-ground option for a destintion from which you could choose in developing your customized itinerary, with maps, that you could print out, access online from anywhere or upload to your PDA.

But, I’d rather see that kind of capital spent on local experts who would cull all that information, weed out the biased and the trite, and present a similar menu. I think that’s what everyone is looking for – someone who’s been there, done that, and can tell you if it’s right for you. People are forever on the lookout for reliable, accurate, “cool” info on their destinations, which is why there are so many of these trip planning sites out there.

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@ Miss Expatria
I have written a blog post about this issue on my blog

http://www.tourcms.com/blog/2008/09/29/ugc-vs-expert-agent-vs-local-which-is-most-credible-for-travel-knowledge/

I muse that the reason trip planning websites are losing their shine is because they are losing the content credibility battle.

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@ Alex I too think that is EXACTLY why. They seem to be set up all bright and shiny, but then become unsupervised and it’s like a free-for-all. I am tired of sifting through barely disguised plugs written by restaurant managers and whiny complaints from picky hotel guests with a soapbox.

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Darren,
All great points. Here’s a few thoughts:
1. Why US only? We’re focused on US because that is where there is critical mass of travel and structured content. Auto travel accounts for 75% of US leisure travel according to TIA. So a vast majority of travel planning actually happening is US based.
2. Does this leave out interesting places? YES. I am DYING to cover international. For example, I want to go to Cambodia, Kyrgystan, Kazhakstan, Xinjiang province of China, Syria, Egypt, etc. etc. etc. and it pains me that we can’t cover those areas.
3. The big problem with being a travel planning site is that you have to think that you are better than all the other travel planning sites out there. How could that ever be the case? at UpTake, we *ASSUME* there are thousands of better sites out there than us. Our only goal is to get you to the right place. There are thousands of lesser known sites than TripAdvisor who have great content. We just want to help them be found!

Anyway, thanks for your RANT. Its great. And feel free to blog or email us on how we can improve, and how we can get creative. We are so often locked into what we are doing because we have to be to get to a profitable stage, we may be sacrificing creativity to do that.

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Good points. Yep, we’re 100% focused on US right now, including inbound travelers who read English. Frankly I think we’ed have to learn a lot to enter Europe and it takes funding and focus to do it right. I’m generally pretty conservative about how US market learnings can or cannot be applied in other markets. We could get hosed if we just assume everything is exactly the same in Europe as the US. I’m certain that’s not true.

I was thinking with the declining USD that inbound US tourism would be a great place to be, but now I’m worried that we are looking at a worldwide economic slowdown…

We’re just getting started so I’m not worried so much about how it will affect us, but it will affect the overall industry.

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Hi Darren
Expectations are set by the initial website…… see this blog post I wrote about it last year

Re US expectations – if you go to one of the largest Hiltons in London – they have rooms set aside just for US customers….. with a different configuration to their European / Asian customers. (Yes it is twin beds – both large – rather than a king / queen double)

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Darren,

As someone who works for a travel planning service, your post certainly resonated.

That said, you raise some really good points. I guess the key issue is figuring out what people want from travel sites other than the ability to book trips, hotels, cars, etc. (aka Travel 1.0).

Clearly, they’re looking for information and insight so they can make smart planning decisions. The trick and challenge is figuring out how to do it. Do you provide copious amounts of information, and then make people pick and choose what to read/watch. Do you only provide information about the top-rated places? Do you provide user-generated content or professional sources? There are lots of questions, and many different approaches being taken to answer them.

While you may be bored with travel planning sites, the silver lining is there are lots of great things happening with a variety of interesting players battling for attention and traction. At the end of the day, it will make the online travel market a better place to be.

By the way, thanks for the kind words of PlanetEye. I think we’re taking a unique approach to travel planning. Rather than go on about the features, I would encourage people to come take a look. We just launched our new design so feedback, comments and suggestions would be appreciated.

Mark

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Interesting discussion. One option is to ignore all these new travel/trip-planning sites and concentrate on the ones that have been around for years, delivering useful, expert-written content without the UGC fluff. Sure the sites may lack some of the whizz-bang features you see on the newer sites, but that doesn’t make the content any less useful.

Outside US examples include:
For Brazil: BrazilMax (http://www.brazilmax.com/)
For Turkey: Turkeytravelplanner (http://www.turkeytravelplanner.com/)
For SE Asia: Travelfish (http://www.travelfish.org) – my site.

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No doubt you will see the travel planning market consolidate over time. I should point out that PlanetEye lets you plan trips to destinations around the world.

Mark

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I think mobile has huge potential for travel planning. The key is figuring out what consumers want to do with their mobile devices. With GPS becoming increasingly popular, the ability to use someone’s location to deliver valuable and relevant travel information could be the “killer app”. How often have you found yourself wondering if there was a good nearby restaurant after visiting an attraction? The ability to get this kind of information can easily make a good trip great.

Mark

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