

Ask HN: Startup Idea - Outsource Travel planning ? - unohoo

I was recently planning a trip to Vancouver/Victoria and was frustrated with amount of time and effort I had to put into researching/planning the trip.<p>Research flights / hotels to get the best deals, researching activities/places to see / dining etc.
Tried using Travelmuse/tripwolf but found them inadequate.<p>What if there's a service where you could outsource all the manual / grunt work of researching and travel planning ?<p>Do you think such a service would work ? If such a service existed, would you use it?
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jm4
Umm... Like a travel agent? Anyone under 30 might not have ever had to use
one. I don't even know how people made travel plans at all without an agent
before all these travel sites existed. I think you had to show up at the
ticket counter at the airport or something to buy a ticket. The alternative
was to go to an agent's office where they were hooked into some system that
let them sell you all kinds of tickets. I never had to deal with that mess,
but my parents still use agents from time to time.

I agree that travel planning is a drag, but there are a couple reasons people
hardly use agents anymore. They're expensive and most travelers want things
fast and cheap. It's how airlines like Spirit (who I like to refer to as the
"Greyhound of the Skies") manage to stay in business.

You've got your work cut out for you. There's already a solution to this
problem. The only real opening you've got is the ability to provide something
comparable at a very low cost.

~~~
unohoo
Train a workforce in India and provide services for say 9.99 for single
destination ? 4.99 for each additional destination ?

just thinking out loud !

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smallhadron
The travel agent has existed since at least 1841

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Cook>

For simple trips people are choosing not to pay the overhead for their
personal travel now that you can shop around easily yourself. The agent is
still pretty good for package holidays, though.

Companies like American Express offer corporate travel services. My last job
had this service: one could call or email them from the back of the cab
between meetings and they'd call back in 30 minutes with a whole itinerary,
with flights, car and hotel. Needless to say, this is very expensive, but
probably cheaper than having dedicated personnel at your company.

So the optimize-for-cheap and optimize-for-easy markets are probably covered.
Perhaps there is a gap in between, but you'll be competing with some
established companies from either side.

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pedalpete
I had some thoughts on this during the early days of the web, recognizing that
the travel agent business was in jeopardy, i thought they would 'refactor'
themselves as the travel experts for their area. Apparently, not the case.

There are lots of sites going after the market much like Travelmuse/tripwolf.
Have you tried planeteye or dopplr? I'm not sure if they are any better.

In many ways, I think these sites are trying to do what you describe, though I
don't think anybody has cracked it yet. Of course tripadvisor is another good
source which I have relied on from time to time.

Hope you had a great time in BC, and made it up to my hometown of Whistler
too.

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unohoo
dopplr doesnt help so much when it comes to planning. Tripadvisor is useful --
but it doesnt alleviate the problem that i still have to sift through the
hundreds of posts to find the relevant info.

Aside - BC was great - loved Victoria !! More than Whistler :-)

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osipov
Have you looked into Rearden Commerce? It is popular with corporate clients.

<http://www.reardencommerce.com/products/overviews/travel.php>

~~~
unohoo
isnt it only for corporations to offer to their employees ?

~~~
osipov
mostly but you may still want to look into it as example of high end travel
planning

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ddemchuk
Another option for this idea, instead of outsourcing it, is to create
essetially the "last.fm" of travel...collect information from people about
their trips (where they stayed, how they got there, where they visited) and
then when people want to plan new trips, you can intelligently recommend
things using the collected data as a reference.

The hard part would be collecting that initial data. Maybe a Facebook App
would encourage people to participate.

I picture the trip planning screen being a set of sliders and drop downs. Put
in where you're starting from, where you're going, how much you want to spend,
and then the site does all the work.

