

Despite technology, travel discovery sucks. - jmspring

My wife and I have been together for about 12 years in that time, we have had some amazing vacations based on personal knowledge or hopping into a European airport and picking a last minute destination.  My wife is an EU national and had the benefit of lots of vacations, working in tourism, and traveling the world.  I'm a California native, traveled, but best at talking to CA destinations.<p>In the past decade, the best vacation spot we have been to is La Palma (Canary Islands). I can discuss the features that made that trip amazing  but there is no way to express that into a modern travel search engine.  In reality, it was a cheap, last minute trip, that had air fare, an amazing house, and rental car on La Palma over Christmas / New Years many moons ago. But the rural setting, lack of tourists, nature (hikes) and other intangibles made the vacation.<p>That trip was 11 years ago. To date, there is no search site capable of taking the assorted variables and producing a comparable output. Last minute travel sites like L'Tur (german) have starting point, destination, and maybe an activity, but ... it misses the soul.<p>For this trip I am reaching out to friends and colleagues. We are looking at AirBnB, VRBO, and other options. We're planning on contacting a couple of the last minute travel options (in Europe) to engage with a human -- I might reach out to an agent here -- that said, it seems like travel discovery based on prior experiences is lacking.<p>I've often thought, if I had the money and time, my dream startup would solve the problem of "here are my likes, here is where I am, provide me relevant content". That is very local focused, the next step up from that is, here is the sort of travel I am interested in (for this trip), here is roughly where I want to go, help me narrow down the options.<p>Can this be solved by data (big or small) or is it still something requiring a human touch?<p>(updated for formatting)
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alid
Hey man! This is what my startup is working on. Travel is a ridiculously
cluttered industry, yet no one's managed to nail it. (I think because they're
so focused on pure monetisation - skimming off bookings etc - they're less
focused on the inspirational or emotional design side of things. We're pairing
this with kick-*ss functionality). We're not launched yet, but I would love to
get your feedback on our demo when it's finalized :)

