

Show HN: My MVP for a Travel Recommendation Engine - ry0ohki

Many years ago (2007?) I put together this site: http://www.tripzard.com .  I never launched it, because it was basically a MVP/POC so it's not very refined, but I just found it again today and was surprised it still kind of works decent.<p>The idea was kind of like "Find Your Spot" where you answer a bunch of questions about what you like to do when you travel, and it calculates where the best places for your to travel would be.  Most people I found don't realize there are some interesting options out there instead of just going to Cancun.<p>What does the HN community think, is this a project worth picking up again?  The site is probably buggy etc.. but it does represent a lot of manual data gathering on my part and there still is nothing out there like this site to my knowledge.  I've always enjoyed travel, geography and history so this project was definitely a joy to work on.
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sagacity
I just completed running one full scenario (destination South America) and
everything (including the results) went perfectly for me.

Now, some observations/suggestions, mainly related to SEO (Based on the
current site, I'm nearly sure you already know this, but just in case):

1) Missing Title and meta tags

2) Consider rewriting

<http://www.tripzard.com/results>

to

<http://www.tripzard.com/results/south_america> (or whatever)

and

<http://www.tripzard.com/places/91>

to

[http://www.tripzard.com/places/south_america/argentina/bueno...](http://www.tripzard.com/places/south_america/argentina/buenos_aires)

Let me know if you need me to volunteer any work on this - will be happy to do
what I can.

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ry0ohki
Thanks for the tips, makes sense!

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sagacity
One quick suggestion, for Step 1 - use IP to geolocation and show visitor's
country by default. Can improve the UX just a bit. :-)

I'd call it extremely well thought-out (even if not fully implemented yet) and
_way_ too _cool_! (I noticed some fine mod rewrite work there - super cool.)

With travel sector being one of the largest money spinners online, I'd say
just floor the gas pedal on this, like _now_ \- I can already see the major
(and not-so-major) online travel booking portals scrambling to license this
from you.

ps. Give a serious thought to patenting this, urgently.

~~~
ry0ohki
Thanks! Geolocation is a good idea to remove an unnecessary step.

~~~
sagacity
Check my thread announcing free geolocation API in case you need it:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2255089>

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tgrass
1\. Too many questions

2\. Ensure that the questions are all ordered the same; that is: conservative
response, centrist, liberal (no crime, some crime, crime ok)

3\. Cancun was the first return for me with 100%. Maybe I don't know myself,
but I worked in back country Alaska and have crossed the country several times
on motorcycle. I'm not the Cancun type. Your copy above says explicitly
"instead of just going to Cancun." Hmmmm.

~~~
ry0ohki
That's pretty funny Cancun came up... the algorithm definitely needs work if I
continue it, or maybe Cancun is your dream vacation and you didn't realize it
;)

~~~
tgrass
Cheers to that!

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kongqiu
I really like this. Do you have the ability to bring smaller destinations in
to the mix as well? (E.g., Moab, Aspen, Zacatecas, Mendoza, etc.)

I agree that there are too many questions. Ideally, I'd like one page of
questions, with options to "refine" once I see the results. I think that
having shorter questions with standard answers (e.g., "must"/"nice to
have"/"don't care"/"don't want") would make it easier to quickly go through.

~~~
ry0ohki
I could bring it to anywhere in theory, just a matter of getting the data. I
think I picked all major cities in North America and capitals of most of the
rest of the world for this version

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DanielStraight
I think it's a great idea. It would be nice to not have to answer so many
questions though. Maybe a few basics, and then let me browse around and "like"
things (NOT publicly on Facebook), and then infer what I like. More of a
recommendation engine. But then with the option to manually "advanced search"
using all (or some) of the questions.

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albahk
Maybe you could have some helpful presets to present some results quickly i.e.

\- 18-24 year old male looking to go nuts <click here>

\- adventurous couple with young kids <click here>

\- boring, retired couple who are scared of ethnic food <click here>

I filled out the profile for Asia and got Bali - which is full of Aussie
tourists drinking and surfing but I specifically wanted no night-
life/partying/prostitution. Somewhere like Phuket, Koh Samui, Boracay would
have been better fits in my opinion. I guess with more data points the
accuracy should improve over time.

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sagacity
Clickable:

<http://www.tripzard.com>

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Jontuckerusa
Wanderfly.com has some features to check out. Good use of flickr api.

I had similar idea and found wanderfly, among others.

