Social travel site HereOrThere, backed by Hugo Burge (the internet entrepreneur involved in Cheapflights), has started to publicly promote its beta site after three months in development.
Backed by Howzat Media LLP, the early stage dotcom investment fund which Burge runs with partner David Soskin, HereOrThere is something of a me-too play in the travel space. You know the drill, add your profile, upload reviews, pictures and video about where you are or where you’ve been, read reviews of places you plan to visit, etc.
That’s not to say they aren’t tapping into a fertile market. A recent YouGov survey found that 67% of British holidaymakers intend to use the internet to conduct most or all of their travel planning next year. Some 40% of those surveyed said they have not visited a high street travel agent in the last 2 years, and 76% of holiday planning Brits research their destinations online.
HereOrThere is a good looking site and allows the ability to ‘rate’ a post about a place. The site also features Yahoo maps and commenting on posts – in fact it feels like one big community blog decked out to look like a ‘web 2.0’ travel site. But although it’s not strictly travel, TrustedPlaces, also from the UK, is a lot more advanced since its recent relaunch, intelligently tracking the user’s clickstream as they go to suggest results. It’s that kind of functionality HereOrThere needs to look to, if it hasn’t already.
HereOrThere joins a crowded space, which in the Uk is dominated by WAYN.
Trivia: Rather hilariously HereOrThere was originally going to be called Twitter.