It’s all go, go, go here at TravelMuse, and over the course of July we continued to get the word out about the company through blogs, consumer magazines, press, TV and radio.

As much as she prefers to be behind a camera rather than in front of one, Donna flew out to Miami and was interviewed by Joel Connable on NBC6 news about our Inspiration Finder and planning tools. We were listed as one of their Cool Travel Websites. Watch the video footage here:

The August edition of Mens Journal hit the shelves in mid-July and featured TravelMuse as one of Three New Travel Services—the added advantage is we can legitimately display the cover shot of the very fit Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte in the office! I’m allowed to say that—right? In fact, why don’t I just share it with you…



Kevin did a couple of radio interviews, first with Travel Hub Radio and then KOMO 1000 News Radio in Seattle. He was also interviewed by Verne Kopytoff of the San Francisco Chronicle, where we were featured as a new site offering creative tools for finding and planning vacations.

Vani Rangachar (Los Angeles Times) in the Dallas Morning News said, “Easily its coolest gadget is the user-friendly “Inspiration Finder” … and I also liked Trip Plan, which allows you to collect disparate info in one place by bookmarking and labeling Web sites.”

A big thanks goes out to the blogging community too for their continued interest. Donna and I attended the BlogHer ‘08 Conference in San Francisco earlier this month, and we had a great time reconnecting with Stacy Morrison of Redbook and meeting a number of other women bloggers!

Christina from coolmompicks said, “TravelMuse’s original content and cool trip planning tools make it an interesting place to spend some time; I may never get to a Family Surf Camp but it sure was fun to read about.”

Nicole Feliciano of Momtrends covered TravelMuse and talked to me about tips for planning a vacation when bringing children aged 0-6 and what my vacation plans were.

We’ll have an exciting new company announcement next week … stay tuned!

Obama and Clinton may still be battling it out for the Democratic nomination, but TravelMuse’s Washington, D.C., issue is now final and live on the site! The capital is one of the country’s top family vacation destinations, and you’ll see why after you check out all the great D.C. coverage we’ve added: from a breakdown of museums and monuments by age appropriateness to recommended family-friendly Washington hotels and restaurants to special events and children’s theater and more.

This issue also includes articles on renting a Tuscan villa; Birmingham hiking trails; Cape Town, South Africa township tours; and a road trip survival guide by Amy Hatch, our Back Page columnist.

We’re also officially weekly now. I don’t know whether I should jump for joy or scream and cry. I started out in publishing at a trade paper that came out 18 times per year: monthly during slow periods, biweekly during busy seasons. When I moved over to a monthly magazine, I thought it would be a breeze—I’d be in production only one week a month, not two! Little did I know that no matter what your set schedule is, you’re always going to be scrambling to make sure the latest issue is “just right.” Or “good enough,” when it comes time to call an end to the fixes and just get it out the door—especially when the staff has been downsized and you’re producing 50 percent more content with half the staff. But that’s another story (from the past) for another blog.

As for TravelMuse’s weekly production schedule, it’s too soon yet to tell how many new gray hairs I’ll start to see. Publishing online is vastly different from the print process; there are many more details and steps that you have to take into consideration, in comparison. But it’ll be worth it if the additional content makes a positive impact for our users. And the only way we’ll know that is if you tell us. So drop us a line—either here on the blog, by using the feedback button on the site or to our editorial inbox, editorial at travelmuse dot com.

We look forward to hearing from you and hope you enjoy the issue!

For the majority of people in the United States, the process of online travel booking is a pretty familiar experience by now. It’s probably right up there with buying books on Amazon or searching for information via Google.

It turns out that online travel is in fact the most mature and largest single e-commerce category. More than $90,000,000,000 (that’s 90 billion dollars) in travel transactions are done online every year—in the United States alone. And the market is still growing—with growth greater than 50 percent (year over year) seen in emerging dominant economies like China, India, and Brazil.

So if online travel has become commonplace, and Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity and Priceline have become household names, why is there such a boom in travel start-ups right now? What problems are they trying to solve? How do they hope to compete?

Look no further than TripAdvisor, the newest household name on the block. TripAdvisor recognized a great opportunity and filled a huge void that was unmet by the large online travel agencies — people want hotel reviews from real people. Is it really surprising that people are nearly twice as likely to trust user reviews than what the hotel says about their rooms? (TripAdvisor now has 10 million reviews and has become such a hot phenomenon, that some hotels have taken to posting favorable reviews of themselves; so make sure you read between the lines.)

So this current groundswell in travel start-ups (which some have dubbed travel 2.0) is a direct response to the identification of a whole host of other niches and voids that have yet to be filled in the space. And the acceleration of innovation over the last 12-18 months is largely attributable to the decreasing cost of technology and simply a function of the Web itself. Data is everywhere (but useful information is scarce), software frameworks have gotten inexpensive and it doesn’t take as much money or as many people to kick-start a new venture. That said, I have a sense that we are seeing a bit of a travel 2.0 bubble with something of a “build it and they will come” philosophy.

As one of the new entrants in this space, we’re trying torestrain ourselves and stay focused—building a great travel planning product and authoring interesting and helpful content. Here are the key issues we see and are focused on:

• Booking is the last 5 percent of the online travel process. The 95 percent that comes before it is where all the

heavy lifting happens. What people want is help in getting ideas of where to travel and what to do. Hence, our investment in editorial content that is vetted, fact-checked and written by local experts and journalists.

• Not everyone who visits your Web site wants the same thing. Relevancy is essential and we’re focusing on family travelers first. We want to make sure that if you’re a family traveler, our insight and information is helpful to you.

• Planning a trip online can be taxing. We think it should be fun and easy. That’s why we’re so jazzed about the TravelMuse Planner which is currently in private beta, but will be broadly available this summer.

While these are the key issues that we’re focused on, there are many more opportunities out there. We’re excited to see what some of our peers are up to like the guys at UpTake who are making it simple to quickly search thousands of content sites to find information relevant to families.

Travel is a space that is constantly re-defining itself and there are many unmet needs still to be addressed. I agree with Yen Lee at Uptake, that online travel is nowhere near "done".

What do you think the big opportunities are? Or for that matter, the nagging little splinters that should get fixed?

We want to hear from you.

The first “official” TravelMuse issue—Chicago—is now live!

Even though we’ve been publishing since late January, and we migrated the Seattle coverage over from our alpha site last week, this is the first time that a new issue has gone live first on the www address. (I also prefer to give props to Chicago because counting our test issues, this is technically No. 7—lucky!—plus it’s my hometown.)

So just what is a TravelMuse issue?

Typically an issue includes an “issue cover, ” focused on a destination or topic, which is comprised of an engaging image, an overview feature geared toward a wide audience, and three or four shorter satellite articles based on family travel. Below that are four general travel features, my editletter and five rotating columns. One or two of the features or columns might also focus on the cover destination, but not always.

Our current roster of columns includes:

Back Page (a weekly essay)
Book Reviews
College Visits
Ecotourism
Offbeat
Products
Special Needs
Taste Buds
Teen Voice
Travel News

What makes the Chicago issue different is the number of articles about the city: 10 out of 14 (not counting my edit letter).

Yes, that’s a lot. But there’s also a lot about the city worth writing about—great places to eat and stay, sights to see, a college visit itinerary, accessible info for visitors with special needs and more. Add in the fact that in addition to my connection to the city, one of our interns and a regular contributor both live in Chicago, and we all wanted to have our say.

You can read more about the overall issue in my Edit Letter, or dig right in to the content on the homepage.

We hope you enjoy the coverage!!