Editor’s note: TechCrunch contributor Semil Shah is an entrepreneur interested in digital media, consumer Internet, and social networks. Shah is based in Palo Alto and you can follow him on twitter @semil
We’ve heard endlessly how “social” will eventually disrupt and transform old, stodgy industries, perhaps even reinvent them for the better. The promise of this change, of course, is often tempered by the reality that, if indeed this stuff actually happens, it will take time and we’re currently in the early stages of the game.
And when it comes to travel, one of the most heavily regulated industries, disruption and transformation would be music to travelers’ ears. There are a number of reasons travel has become more of an onerous task (thank you, TSA), yet consumers continue to brave the elements to merrily trot around the globe.
Brushing aside the fact that a significant portion of travel is business-related, decisions around leisure travel typically involve a number of factors, many of which are coming online. The catalyst for a personal trip can originate from different sources. One could have vacation time that will evaporate unless you use it. One could be offered a travel deal rate that motivates you to capitalize on it. One may want to catch up with old friends or families, or travel for entertainment, adventure, or to simply get away from your surroundings.
In exploring the travel space through a social lens, most of today’s consumer web-related entrepreneurial attention is focused on what travelers do once they reach their intended destination. In the old days, travelers would book hotels directly (or through travel agents) and would rely on branded guides like Lonely Planet or Frommer’s, hotel concierges, and traditional tour companies to help address these needs. A few years later, services like Kayak and TripIt offered more options for users to organize their travel.
Today’s traveler has many more options. They can “couch surf” or use others’ private spaces as lodging (thanks to Airbnb), and by comparison, could literally pick from over twenty different services to get information about their intended destinations. When I travel somewhere, I’ll typically ask friends on Facebook and Twitter for recommendations, which so far have tended to be excellent and satisfy my needs.
If I happened to need even more information, I could continue my research through sites like TripAdvisor, FlyerTalk, TripIt, Quora (local), explore Foursquare lists, peruse Gowalla’s new social travel guides, or sign up for one of a new wave of startups focused on the space, such as Planely (meet people at the airport or on your flight), Trippy (friend-sourced itineraries), Triposo (interactive mobile guides), Travellr (location-based Q&A), Toour (currently in stealth), Tripping (traveler community service), Twigmore (connect with your friends’ friends in other places), Globetrooper (tool to find travel partners), MyTab (where folks can gift travel to members), Gtrot (scrapes social data and aggregates around places), JetPac (seems to be a slick iPad app, but not released yet), and many, many others I haven’t gotten around to trying.
Jetlagged yet?
The sheer number of startups focusing attention on this aspect of travel seems out of balance to me. Investors like this particular space because the path to victory is clearer, albeit its crowded, and because these types of apps and services could be inherently viral, both in terms of onboarding new users as well as benefitting from positive word-of-mouth.
Instead of destination-based guides, however, I’ve started to wonder if the real opportunity is higher up the decision funnel, before we buy plane tickets and hotel rooms, at the point we first feel the urge to travel. The best travel recommendations I’ve received (and acted on) have come through having conversations with close friends in real life. They share slideshows of their trip and we get to interact with them in rich ways about their experience, to see if we want to sign up for the same feeling. That is a true recommendation with a real strong social signal. These moments of inspiration oftentimes ignite the travel spark and could trigger a transaction. Startups like Gtrot and Gogobot, for instance, allow users to plan trips or record them after the fact, and research travel tips from social networks, organizing information around places.
There’s simply no way that all the destination-based services listed so far will be able to survive such a cluttered field, so it may be worthwhile for some of them to at least consider the discovery-related aspect of travel and to design systems that help draw out and collect users’ preferences around travel, sort of how Gtrot and Gogobot currently do, but perhaps in deeper ways. The current offerings incorporate “social,” yes, but they seem to lack truly relevant social context. For a big decision like traveling, the strong signal usually originates from one trusted friend or source.
Despite an unstable economy, rising fuel costs, and the hassles of air travel, people continue to jam airports worldwide. The majority of travel expenditures are eaten up by transportation and lodging, as well as food and entertainment at the destination. Therefore, today’s trend is to leverage social recommendations to help consumers shape their experiences in new places, though I’d argue this focus area actually ignores richer pastures.
The real opportunities in social travel may lie closer to the top of the decision funnel, at the moment when a consumer discovers a new place he/she wants to travel to. It’s at this point where startups could build applications on top of existing social graphs to help people get inspired about travel, to plan and book their trips, and share them in novel ways with friends and family. There’s no reason TripAdvisor needs to continue to show up on the first page of Google results for travel searches anymore.
With all of the data and pictures uploaded to Facebook, the opportunity is just sitting there, waiting for someone to jump on it. If done correctly, a new site or service could be created that actually acts as a modern travel collection and concierge in one, making travel arrangements easier and more affordable. In a nutshell, that is the challenge to startups in this space—to more intelligently incorporate data, to reinvent TripAdvisor’s existing offerings plus adding social, making results more relevant, personalized, and more emotional to interact with. Whomever can crack that code and present travelers with a better travel experience will find themselves in a very enviable seat, high up in the friendly skies.
Photo Credit: Flickr / Phineas H
Called by Michael Arrington “one of my favorite new startups for 2010,” Gogobot connects you with friends to make planning and sharing your travels fun. Based in Silicon Valley, Gogobot launched its private beta in November, 2010. The site has been covered by TechCrunch, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, AllThingsD, Trendslate, the nationally syndicated Nate Berkus Show, WGN-TV Chicago and was mentioned in Trendwatching’s 11 Crucial Consumer Trends for 2011. The site was founded by ex-MySpace exec Travis...
gtrot is a city discovery site that helps users find great things to do, powered by their friends. Add a city to see the best places, deals, and events in that destination – instantly personalized for the user based on recommendations from Facebook, Foursquare, and Twitter friends. Users can save, purchase and share the things they like. Message Facebook friends who live in a city or have been there before. Friends can up or down suggest things to do and...
Trippy is the first web and mobile app designed to let your friends plan your trip, helping you travel better. It’s a friend-sourced solution solving the long-standing problem of untrustworthy and irrelevant travel content. Trippy launched as a finalist in the TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2011 Startup Battlefield. The company was founded by J.R. Johnson and the team that launched and grew VirtualTourist.com and OneTime.com (both bootstrapped and grown to an annual revenue of $18MM and $8MM EBITDA)...
Triposo makes free, interactive travel guides for mobile devices. Using an algorithm based approach Triposo focusses on presenting the most relevant options for a traveler at any given moment in any destination. Currently, Triposo has 20 iOS guides and 50 Android guides in the market. To make their guides Triposo uses open content from different sources, including Wikitravel, Wikipedia, World66 and Openstreetmap.
Wanderfly is the best place to discover and share personalized travel recommendations. Our premise is simple: everyone travels differently, so we all need different recommendations. We’re here to make travel planning more personal, simple, fun, human and inspiring. Wanderfly is venture-backed by notable VCs and angel investors, including Charles River Ventures, MentorTech Ventures, Jason Calacanis, Dave Morin and Roger Dickey, and supported by a distinguished advisors, including John Gerzema, Kevin Farnham, Khoi Vinh, Ravi Simhambhatla and Eric Bradlow.
Travellr is a Q&A service that connects travelers with like-minded locals and past visitors to deliver insightful and relevant local knowledge about their destinations.
TripAdvisor is a free travel guide and research website that offers reviews and information TripAdvisor operates sister sites in other countries (the UK, Italy, Spain, Germany, France, Ireland, Japan and India). Apart from the obligatory reviews of hotels and other attractions, TripAdvisor has some nifty features. Users can quickly and easily post their vacation videos and travel marketers can showcase their properties by featuring their videos on TripAdvisor for free. They also offer a personalization tools allowing users to save...
Quora, founded in June 2009, first launched in private beta in January 2010. Quora is a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it. The most important thing is to have each question page become the best possible resource for someone who wants to know about the question. One way you can think of it is as a cache for the research that people do looking things up on the web and asking...
Foursquare is a geographical location based social network that incorporates gaming elements. Users share their location with friends by “checking in” via a smartphone app or by text message. Points are awarded for checking in at various venues. Users can connect their Foursquare accounts to their Twitter and Facebook accounts, which can update when a check in is registered. By checking in a certain number of times, or in different locations, users can collect virtual badges. In addition, users...
Gowalla is a mobile and web service that gives people around the world a new way to communicate and express themselves through the everyday places and extraordinary settings they enjoy. People can capture and share their spot in the world with friends and family, while discovering new places, events and trips as they go. Gowalla offers businesses, campaigns, and organizations the unique opportunity to reward loyalty, reach new consumers, and to create memorable experiences. Based in Austin, Texas, Gowalla was...
Twigmore is the first travel network on Facebook and helps travelers and locals connect through friends. Twigmore users leverage their Facebook friend network to find places to stay, things to do, people to meet and get the most out of their travels. It’s hard for a traveler to find trusted locals to introduce them to a city. Twigmore solves this problem by helping Facebook users get up-to-date recommendations, meet up with interesting locals or get help with things that come...
Tripping is the world’s largest metasearch platform for home rentals (think: Kayak for Airbnb). With over 850,000 local properties in 18,000+ cities, travelers have access to the widest selection of vacation and short-term rental homes worldwide. Tripping also has a social platform with users in 175+ countries who connect for travel tips, shared cups of coffee and free homestays. The company launched in May 2010 from TechCrunch Disrupt in NYC and has since raised a $1 million Seed round...
Globetrooper is a social platform where travelers can find partners for global trips and expeditions. The concept of Globetrooper is to ‘Travel Together’. Anyone can publish a trip or join a trip. Trips range from weekend drives across the US to year-long adventures to all seven continents. Globetrooper has supported numerous highly-publicised expeditions. For example, a 20-person 12,000km circumnavigation of India by rail. There was no tour guide or company. The group met on Globetrooper, made plans over the course of...
Founded in August 2008 and based in San Francisco, California, Airbnb is a trusted community marketplace for people to list, discover, and book unique spaces around the world – online or from a mobile phone. Whether an apartment for a night, a castle for a week, or a villa for month, Airbnb connects people to unique travel experiences, at any price point, in more that 26,000 cities and 192 countries. And with world-class customer service and a growing community...
Couchsurfing is the world’s most trusted travel community, connecting a global network of travelers, adventure seekers and lifelong learners dedicated to sharing their cultures, hospitality and authentic experiences. Founded in 2004, Couchsurfing connects over 5 million members in more than 96,000 cities via its website and mobile applications. The company is headquartered in San Francisco. Members use the website to coordinate contacts and home accommodation with other community members around the world. The website allows the creation of extensive...
Compare and contrast the impact of offline conversations with those online and the difference is profound. Face-to-face is where strong relationships are developed, opinions are swayed, agreements are made and the world is changed. When we travel we’re typically bored, antisocial and waste a lot of precious time. We’re at the mercy of serendipity and the odds we enjoy ourselves are not good. Planely’s mission is to socialise travel and create millions of new personal and professional relationships by every means...
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