TravelMuse is excited to launch Ask Friends where TravelMuse users can tap into their network of Facebook friends to ask for suggestions and tips for their next trip.

People planning trips regard recommendations from friends, family and co-workers as the most influential factor in making travel decisions¹. Also, people trust online recommendations less because they come from strangers they know nothing about. So with more than 300 million active users² on Facebook, you're sure to find a few friends who’ve been there, done that and are eager to share their personal recommendations with you!

We’ve also implemented Facebook Connect, so you can easily sign in to TravelMuse from Facebook and sync up your accounts. To sync an existing TravelMuse account, sign in to TravelMuse first, then go to your profile page and click the "fconnect" button.

To round out our Facebook release, we added a simple TravelMuse app that lets you start a New Trip or Get Advice within Facebook, or jump straight to TravelMuse to Get Inspired or view My Trips.

How does Ask Friends work?

Once you’ve entered your chosen Trip destination on TravelMuse you’ll reach Step 1.of the planning process where you can begin finding and saving information to your Tripfolio. Click on the new button “Ask Friends”.

You’ll be prompted to connect through Facebook Connect where you can then add a personal note and ask for travel advice on your Facebook wall.

Friends can respond to your call for advice by clicking on the Help link and following a few easy steps to recommend specific items for your trip.

Friends can choose to post results they enter to your wall.

Most importantly, recommendations and notes from your friends are automatically added to your Trip on TravelMuse.

More about the TravelMuse app

The TravelMuse app can be found at http://apps.facebook.com/travelmuse/ and provides a handy way to start a New Trip or Get Advice for a trip. It can also link direct to TravelMuse so you can Get Inspired or view My Trips.

We hope you enjoy these newly integrated Facebook tools and that they help you to plan even better trips this holiday season!

Let us know what you think!

Information Sources:
1.     US Online Planning and Booking, eMarketer, August 2008
2.     http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

With TravelMuse approaching 3,000 followers on Twitter (@TravelMuse) I was interested to read the results of a new survey “Travel Insights 100 Survey Reveals How Twitter is Being Used by the Travel Industry”  published by UpTake and conducted by Travel Insights 100, a newly launched travel industry panel led by Uptake, Tips from the T-List and BootsnAll.

After surveying online travel industry experts and bloggers they conclude:

•   52 percent just started using Twitter in the past twelve months.
•   31 percent claim to be Twitter addicts (where they use Twitter ten or more times a day).
•   The top three subjects to tweet about are blog posts (93 percent), travel industry news (70 percent) and travel information (82 percent).
•   Consumers could use Twitter to help plan a trip by looking for insider tips and recommendations (75 percent), connecting with local Twitterati (69 percent), and finding a deal (63 percent).

See full survey results.

Elliott Ng, co-founder, UpTake said “…we are still very much in the experimental phase of how these social media tools can be best used.” I agree and as I discussed with a research analyst yesterday, I think sharing best practice is one of the most valuable ways to learn how we can leverage these new tools. The Travel Insights 100 panel seems positioned to do that, and I look forward to reading more in the future.

Although Twitter may face a rocky road ahead as it figures out the challenges of monetization, spam, relevancy etc., I also agree that micro-blogging is here to stay, especially as we see greater adoption of the mobile Web. While penetration of smartphone users is still fairly low (17 percent in Q2, 2009, source Nielsen), it shows significant growth potential and offers a platform particularly suited to micro-blogging.

I would like to ask this panel some other questions such as:
•    Do you measure the ROI on Twitter, what metrics do you regularly track?
•    How much time do you actually spend on Twitter everyday? I find myself distracted some days managing multiple social media sites while trying to get other work done. It brings a new meaning to multi-tasking!

Today, I am delighted to announce the latest release of the TravelMuse Planner. (From the TravelMuse homepage, just type in where you want to go to try it out.) This is the most advanced yet intuitive trip planning solution on the Web and we’re really excited to share it with you! Our goals for this release were to:

1. Make the overall process of trip planning on TravelMuse even easier and more fun.
2. Make it simpler for you to find and save relevant content—both on TravelMuse and from anywhere on the Web.
3. Create a forum for TravelMuse users to share information about the Web site and the trip planning process.

Here’s a quick rundown on the key features:

A Tripfolio That Follows You Everywhere

The Tripfolio is your virtual manila folder—a central storage container for all your travel research. It’s the place where you save anything that interests you while planning your trip. You’ll notice that the Tripfolio is now bound to the right side of the site and is present when you are using the TravelMuse Planner.

Above: When you begin a trip, your Tripfolio is empty. As you save research, it appears in your Tripfolio.

Above: Tripfolio with saved research items.

New! Embedded Web Search

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.

Now, with embedded Web search, users can explore the Web and save any interesting Web pages directly to their trip plan without leaving TravelMuse—no more managing multiple windows or endless bookmarking, and no more e-mailing links back and forth to your friends while planning a vacation.

It doesn’t matter what kind of page it is: A hotel review, an article, a blog post—all of them can be saved and stored centrally. Now, co-travelers can save all of their favorite research in the same place.

TravelMuse is the first travel Web site to harness the power of the Web in this way.

The screenshot below illustrates how TravelMuse has integrated embedded Web search into the trip planning experience. Note that there are two tabs at the top of the page; one tab provides access to TravelMuse’s own great content. The second tab lets you explore the Web using embedded Web search. The power of this integrated experience is that you can save both TravelMuse content with Web content to a single place—the Tripfolio.

New! Community Forums

Have a question about TravelMuse or a great idea for a new feature? On the new community forum you can connect with other TravelMuse users and communicate with the TravelMuse product team. It’s your go-to location for product help and idea exchange.
We hope you like this new release as much as we do. As always, please send us your ideas and feedback so that we can continue to improve the TravelMuse experience.

One last thing: With this release, we are also refocusing our content development around the planning process. What this means is that you’ll see fewer general articles and more bite-sized pearls of wisdom specifically designed to make your trip planning experience better. Leading our content development efforts is Jill K. Robinson, who assumes the role of Managing Editor. Over the coming months, you’ll see new content emerge on the site such as destination ratings, recommended trips and thousands of activity descriptions in hundreds of destinations.

Happy travels!
Kevin and the TravelMuse Team

I returned last week from the annual Association of Travel Marketing Executives (ATME) conference in blisteringly hot Las Vegas, Nevada. Here are my top 10 takeaways from a great event.

10. Imagini demonstrated some cool and useful technology that wowed everyone. The special sauce is something called “visual DNA” that profiles consumers based on their reaction to photos. Hotels.com in the United Kingdom has integrated it into its booking path—it’s called the Hotel Visualiser—and it’s driven a real uptick in conversions. 

9. With great challenge comes great opportunity. Some of the most successful brands were born during the Great Depression. Today, in the midst of a “Great Recession,” new and interesting companies are hatching to define the next generation of online travel. Trazzler, for example, thrilled the audience with its deft integration of social media platforms—Twitter and Facebook. 

8. It’s the economy, stupid. Every segment has felt the pinch from destination marketing organizations (DMOs), to online travel agencies (OTAs), to airlines and hotels. Henry Harteveldt of Forrester used the term “neo-frugal chic” to describe the new reality. We’ve seen the end of excess—flash is out, value is in. Absolutely.

7. Social media is inextricably linked to daily business. Case in point: Dan Comenduley, manager of communications marketing at United Airlines, says the airline has created a dedicated Web site for its top 500 travelers (Global Services customers, perhaps?), whereas JetBlue ... has leveraged the “twittersphere” to connect with cost-conscious fliers. These two varied approaches work because they enhance the respective business model of each company.

6. ROE (return on engagement) is the new ROI (return on investment) is a hot topic. Jeff DeKorte of Travel Ad Network described the current online booking and shopping experience to be as interesting as withdrawing $20 from an ATM. I heard one person grumble, “If we (the travel industry) were marketing sushi, we’d call it ‘cold, dead fish.’”  Ouch. Several emerging companies—Imagini, Nileguide and TravelMuse—shared novel approaches for inspiring, engaging and building trust with users through compelling design.

5. Shorter trips are the norm. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) is seeing “consumers more willing to take a break than a vacation.” Why? People are afraid to go away for more than a long weekend for fear of being laid off.

4. Despite the economic challenges of today, successful companies are building strategic plans for the future. The Orlando Convention and Visitors Bureau, for example, is planning conventions out to 2030. How does one even begin to imagine what life will look like 20+ years from now? This video helped get people thinking outside the box.

3. The great American road trip is alive and well. The industry is seeing much greater strength in road travel than in air travel as gas prices are down by 50 percent versus July 2008; airfare is down a more moderate 4.1 percent thru March 2009.

2. The number of people unsure of where to go has doubled in the last 12 months from 11 percent of the traveling public to 20 percent. The need for travel inspiration has never been greater.

1. Twitter has exploded. It was astonishing to see, since last year most attendees had no idea what Twitter was. This year, dozens of attendees tweeted away (read the stream here: #atmeconf) and lots of press, bloggers and industry insiders followed the posts remotely. Questions poured in from around the Web, making the Q&A sessions livelier. Wall Street 24x7 recently posted a story on 10 ways Twitter will permanently change American business.

Here’s an 11th: Meetings and events will never be the same again.

What’s next on the calendar? Now that it’s May, we’re gearing up for the Association of Travel Marketing Executives (ATME) conference in Las Vegas! It runs May 27 to 28, 2009, at the Green Valley Ranch Resort. 

Henry Harteveldt (vice president and principal analyst, Forrester Research) will kick things off with a keynote speech addressing comsumers’ thoughts on the economy, travel and marketing in general. Over the two days of the conference, there are a number of informative sessions planned.

My top five session picks include:

1.    What Is the Role of Advertising in a Recession? 

How to plan out the rest of 2009 and what to think about 2010, moderated by Rob Torres of Google.

2.    Taking Social Computing From the Edge to the Center

Susan Black (managing partner, Susan Black Associates) will moderate a panel with Tim Simmonds (vice president, United Airlines) and Adam Rugel (president, Trazzler.com). Unsurpisingly, Twitter seems to be a hot agenda topic!

3.    Improving the Online Selling Process

Kevin Fliess (CEO, TravelMuse) will join Josh Steinitz (CEO, Nile Guide) and Alex Wilcock (CEO, Imagini) in a session moderated by Jeff DeKorte (vice president, Travel Ad Network) in rethinking the way travel firms engage customers and address selling shortfalls.

4.    Improving Your Advertising and Promtion ROI

I’m always on the lookout for new tools. This session peaked my curiosity and includes former Yahoo general manager Brad King, now managing director, BlueKai Channels, who intend to build the world's largest database of intentions.

5.    Profiting From Design

Optimize your Web site from a design and usability standpoint with Dean Kakridas of Frog Design.

There are various registration packages, but ATME members can register at the special rate of $495 (which ends May 15, 2009). Find out more here.

And keep an eye out for Kevin in Las Vegas. Be sure to steer him away from the tables and slot machines—that’s not the way to improve our ROI!

Blog post written by Marissa Klein

TravelMuse has had much to celebrate in the past month: the two-year anniversary of the company’s founding, the re-design of the TravelMuse Planner and the launch of the Yaycations Calculator. To celebrate our accomplishments and all of the team’s hard work, we wanted to do something out of the ordinary: indoor skydiving.

Last Thursday afternoon (Apr. 30), we cleared out the office and headed to iFly in Union City, Calif., for indoor skydiving in its vertical wind tunnel. First, we watched a video and learned the hand signals: legs bent, legs straight, chin up and, of course, “relax!” Next came the suiting up: full nylon flight suits, kneepads, goggles and helmets for all. Finally, we took turns flying with an instructor’s guidance for a minute or two at a time.

So what does indoor skydiving feel like? It’s hard to say, since it’s difficult to equate it to anything other than what it is: hovering on your stomach above a wire grate that is not unlike a giant hairdryer-like turbine. We’d all joked before the trip that this would be the closest any of us would get to real skydiving, but I think after the indoor version went so well, there may even be a few among us who are ready to try the real thing!

Although Kurtis thought a fear of heights would compel him to stay on the ground, once he saw how safe and controlled it would be to fly in the tunnel, he was persuaded to give it a try, and had a great time. Kids as young as 3 can try iFly, and after seeing how much Russ’ daughter loved flying during our trip, Kevin and Dana plan to return with their own kids.

Our iFly outing was great, and we would definitely recommend it for group and corporate events—we can even relive it with the DVDs we got to take home with us! We wrapped up our celebration with beers and hot wings at Jack’s Brewing Company in Fremont before heading home to work the tangles out of our hair and call it an early night. Spending three minutes in a wind tunnel really takes a lot out of you!

Here’s to two amazing years, and on for many more!

After several months of end-user testing, countless design cycles and many, many cases of Diet Mountain Dew and Red Bull, we are excited to bring you the totally redesigned, simpler yet more powerful, TravelMuse Planner.

The Planner still lets you organize all of your travel research into one central location, create an itinerary and involve your co-travelers in the planning process. But with this release, you also get new robust Mapping and Search Tools that enable you to quickly find and save the information you are looking for—be it articles on a given destination or specific places to sleep, eat and see. You can also now use proximity search to find nearby restaurants, hotels and attractions that are closest to a given location—and view search results plotted out on a map.

In addition, we’ve incorporate more than 2 million user ratings and reviews for hotels, restaurants and attractions from TravelMuse and other Web sites, including Travelocity, TripAdvisor, Yahoo! Travel and more.

Finally, we’ve introduced Customized Travel Guides. You can now create a personalized travel guide—on the fly—that is 100 percent personalized and contains all your important saved research, with maps, your schedule and a detailed city guide. You can build, share and print tailor-made travel guides to take on vacation at no charge.

This is our proudest day at TravelMuse yet. We’ve listened to our users, engaged them in the design process and released something that we think is market leading. We hope you agree.

Kevin & Eric

At the end of this month, key players from within the travel industry will gather in Atlanta to participate in the U.S. Travel Association’s Travelcom’09.

The conference will celebrate Southwest Airlines’ founder and chairman emeritus, Herb Kelleher, who will receive the Steve Fossett Innovation Award.

Noted industry analyst Henry Harteveldt will give a keynote speech on “The State of the Industry 360—There Is No Room for Maybe in These Uncertain Times” where he will focus on the latest 2009 Technographics data from Forrester Research.

The industry’s two newly appointed leaders, Barney Harford (president and CEO, Orbitz Worldwide) and Hugh Jones (president and CEO, Travelocity Global), will discuss challenges for the industry from an executive viewpoint.

Kevin Fliess, TravelMuse CEO, will particpate in a panel alongside Sam Shank (CEO, Dealbase.com), Gregg Brockway (CEO,TripIt) and Yen Lee (president, UpTake). They will be discussing “The New Digital Opportunities That Make Sense in a Challenging Business Environment” moderated by Vela McClam Mitchell (president and CEO, Market Designs, LLC).

It looks set to be an extremely informative conference amoung the industry’s leaders. There is still time to register for the conference, and you may even want to take advantage of the multi-staff discount, where you can buy three registrations for the price of two!

In the meantime, TravelMuse has been nominated for the TravelCom Innovator of the Year Award, sponsored by Kayak, which will be awarded at the Omni Hotel at CNN Center in Atlanta. We’d love your vote—simply click here and vote for TravelMuse before March 23!