In February, as the market was tanking, there was a lot of talk about 2009 being the year of the “Naycation”—aka the Lost Year, The Travel Nuclear Winter, etc.

Should this come to pass, it would be even worse than 2008, which was deemed the year of the “Staycation” by many, e.g., when people chose places close to home to visit for a day or a single over-night stay instead of really getting out on the road exploring.

We conducted a travel survey because we wanted to test this Pollyannaish theory. Turns out that the Naycation is just that—a theory. The majority of respondents to our survey were willing to make big sacrifices in other parts of their lives in order to KEEP traveling. People remain adamant about maintain their right to travel—so much so that many are willing to forego or cut back on other “luxuries,” like new clothes, fancy dinners or spa treatments.

This travel-fighting spirit and resilience needed a name; hence, the term “Yaycation” was born.

Armed with this simple understanding, we decided to empower people with a tool to help them identify ways to trim their spending in order to save some real dough for traveling—the Yaycations Calculator. It helps individuals see how much they’re spending on lattes, lunches and more, and identify where they can cut back.

They can then parlay that “found money” into trips to amazing destinations. Check it out, and let us know what you think. Where do you want to go today?

Kevin & Eric

Did you know that 20 percent of travelers report spending more than 10 hours to plan a trip? (source: TIA.org)

Think about the last time you planned a big vacation. How was the planning experience for you, and how long did it take?

Since we started thinking about what we’d like TravelMuse to be, we consistently came back to the amount of pain involved in planning trips and how we wanted to enable people to easily research, plan and book a trip, regardless of how complex the itinerary is.

Today, we’re excited and proud to announce Social Trip Planning within the TravelMuse Planner. Planning is really at the heart of what we do, so we are just thrilled to share it with you. Read full release

With Social Trip Planning you can plan trips with friends and family, and reuse the travel research of people you trust. Let’s face it, who would you rather get advice from—your best friend whom you’ve known all your life, or “crazy4cabo” whose comments you read on advice sites.

Here’s a list of just some of the many new things that this release enables you to now do on TravelMuse.com:

• Create a day-by-day schedule of your planned activities,, restaurants you’re eating at and places you’re staying from our repository of more than 100,000 points of interest and 90,000 hotels spanning hundreds of destinations globally. Or you can add any page you find on the Web.

• Invite people you’re traveling with to collaborate on the plans. Everyone can add research and modify the schedule, and everyone gets notified immediately of changes to the itinerary.

• Network with people whose travel advice you trust. View your friends’ trip plans and repurpose their research.

• Keep apprised of the trips your friends are planning (if they choose to let you see them) and give them the benefit of your experiences.

• Combine research you find on the Web with reference information and travel articles on TravelMuse, and easily drag and drop these items into a scheduler. You can even move entire days around when the need arises!

The net result: You can now plan trips the way you’ve always wanted to, with great content and easy-to-use tools, plus with a little help from your friends.

So stop e-mailing links back and forth and abandon the manila folder—try the new TravelMuse Planner for yourself today!

Finally, we have to extend our deepest thanks to the entire TravelMuse team and their understanding families who pulled out all the stops to make this release possible.

Happy planning!

Kevin and Eric

As the co-founders of the company, we’re elated to welcome you to the “almost beta” version of TravelMuse! This has been a labor of love from day one. How many people get to combine a passion for both travel and new products and call it work? We founded TravelMuse in April 2007 in response to a growing frustration with the sameness of travel content we found on the Web and the time and effort it took to plan a trip online.

Once we realized it wasn’t just us, but rather lots of people who were getting chaffed by having to visit dozens of sites before booking a trip and were growing weary of being served the same regurgitated content, we quit our comfy corporate gigs and started TravelMuse. Over the last 12 months, we’ve been fortunate to assemble a terrific team of 11 people that shares our passion for building great products—and who of course love to travel. Beyond that common DNA, we’re a diverse bunch—with media, travel, software and publishing backgrounds, and we hail from six different countries:

• Canada,
• Ivory Coast,
• France,
• Scotland,
• China and the
• United States.

This rich mosaic of experiences is something we cherish and, we think, will help us to stay on the cutting edge. In January of this year, we rolled out the first version of the site showcasing vibrant photography, rich destination guides and original travel articles written by more than 50 seasoned journalists and local experts.  We were humbled to get positive and a lot of constructive feedback from our alpha users.  Today we released the TravelMuse Planner to a select group of about 200 alpha users. The Planner allows you to quickly organize and securely share a trip plan with friends and family. The Planner will be open to everyone beginning this summer.

To wrap up this opening post, our ultimate goal is to provide an online travel planning experience that is fun, relevant and a significant improvement over what you find on the Web today. Input and feedback are essential to make this happen. Our sincerest thanks to our alpha users for their insights over the last few months.

To new visitors: please share your thoughts—praise and pans are extremely welcome.

Thanks!

Kevin & Eric