Highlights from PhoCusWright

tmadmin — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 09:29:26 GMT

Earlier this week we presented at The Travel Innovation Summit at the PhoCusWright conference in Hollywood, Calif. Along with 31 other innovative companies, we gave a 10-minute demonstration of our product, which you can see here. Some of the other innovations we found interesting include:

Dealbase.com—launching at the conference and run by Sam Shank, DealBase provides the largest hotel deal Web site and clearly presented its easy to use search and filter tools. In this economy, who’s not after a deal?

Rezgo.com—run by Tips from the T-list publisher Stephen Joyce, Rezgo also launched at the conference and provides an online distribution platform for tour and activity suppliers, as well as managing payment and fulfillment. It’s a winning idea and reminds me of WorldRes when it provided a platform for the long-tail bed and breakfast market.

UpTake —Yen Lee clearly explained the semantic search capabilities that UpTake provides to simplify the travel research process through creating a comprehensive database, analyzing travelers feedback and filtering preferences. Sounds like you’d need a Ph.D. to work at UpTake—impressive!

Yapta—Tom Romary launched its frequent-flier award seat alert service, enabling travelers to be notified when they can use their frequent-flier miles to book an award seat that becomes available on a specific flight. Again, in this economy, who doesn’t want to leverage their air miles—smart move.

Of the innovators who made it through to the five minutes of fame on center stage (Home & Abroad, Wandrian, Yapta, TripIt, Triporati and IM@), it was IM@ who grabbed the attention of the judging panel. You can watch the demo featuring its mobile content management platform and mobile applications here.

In addition to presenting, we seemed to talk non-stop—to our peers at the innovation summit, interested potential partners, and press and bloggers. In the pavilion, we enjoyed the company of newly launched TravelBeen.com and particularly enjoyed Technorati’s supply of Charles Chocolates. Also, it was fun to catch up with BootsnAll, OffBeat Guides and to compare notes with our friendly Austrian competitors Tripwolf.

At the Bloggers Summit, the panel of seasoned bloggers discussed a number of topical areas relating to blogging and business—some useful tips and pit falls to avoid. It was interesting to meet up with some of the industries most respected bloggers, including The Boot, Jen Leo (Los Angeles Times), Travolution and the Cranky Flier to name a few. If you’re not following these guys, then you should be!

It’s great to see so much innovation in the travel industry up close and to be a part of it. We’re back home with many more new ideas, now it’s just a case of implementation!

TravelMuse Releases First Trip Planning Widget for Bloggers; Introduces Crowd Sourcing

tmadmin — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 14:38:59 GMT

At the PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit, Hollywood, Calif. We’re excited to be making a couple of new announcements.

1. Plan-It! Widget for Bloggers

Bloggers can add the Plan-It! widget to individual blog posts, enabling their followers to save and share relevant content within the TravelMuse Planner.

The Plan-It! widget provides a solution to help travelers easily collect and centralize their research—while also increasing visibility for bloggers. Blogs that feature the Plan-It! social bookmarking widget allow visitors to quickly save content from the blog by simply clicking the Plan-It! button on any page. The content is then stored directly into the TravelMuse Planner—a centralized place to collect, organize and share travel research. Within the Planner, individuals can easily create trip plans and share the research they’ve collected with friends, family and fellow travelers—driving more traffic back to the blog postings they’ve saved. Bloggers can visits Plan-It! for Bloggers to find out more and easily add the Plan-It! button.

Sites using Plan-It include: UpTake, Ciao Bambino, Compulsive Traveler and TravelingMamas.

2. Crowd Sourcing

This new feature provides insights into the hottest travel destinations and topics on the Web. As individuals save content into their TravelMuse Planner from TravelMuse.com and from around the Web, lists of most popular destinations and topics are generated and dynamically updated based on trip-planning behavior—view this example destination page for Barcelona to see popular bookmarks. By capturing the actions of crowds, TravelMuse can provide valuable insight reflecting the interests of travelers in real time.

See TravelMuse at the PhoCusWright Conference on stage at 10:16 a.m. on Monday, Nov. 17, or visit us at our table on Monday or Tuesday in the Laurel-Doheny rooms.

For full details click here.

Company Blog

Highlights from PhoCusWright

TravelMuse Releases First Trip Planning Widget for Bloggers; Introduces Crowd Sourcing