

PlanMy.Travel wants to solve travel planning woes with human expertise - Aarvay
http://www.tnooz.com/article/planmy-travel-planning-startup

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buro9
I used to go to travel agents, and loved the speed at which they could
construct the most complex of itineraries but disliked the inconvenience of
visiting their building at their convenience (9am-5:30pm Mon-Sat) and the lack
of specialist knowledge about the place I was visiting.

Then I tried specialist tours, and loved everything except the control over
the itinerary once there.

Then came the internet and it made the convenience work, and it allowed us to
built our own complex itineraries. But now we faced hours of research to find
what is worth visiting, and what isn't.

Recently I moved back to travel agents but now favour specialist ones.

Specifically, I use companies like this:
[http://www.journeylatinamerica.co.uk/](http://www.journeylatinamerica.co.uk/)
where every member of staff have lived or visited the destinations they serve.

I go in, sit down, and if I ask about Chile and the person in front of me
hasn't been they go fetch a couple of people who have been.

I guess my question is: Have you just invented the specialist travel agent "on
the internet" and "with the crowd"? For how is this different from anything
that anyone could've done already?

That cynicism aside, I do think there's a big potential in being the gateway
to such specialism as it can be hard to find the best agents for a given
place.

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aashishg-pmt
>> Have you just invented the specialist travel agent "on the internet" and
"with the crowd"? For how is this different from anything that anyone could've
done already?

It's not. We're just making them more accessible, easily discoverable, and
leveraging the power of an open marketplace so the best ones can thrive. We're
also giving them collaboration tools (think of it like a google docs for trip
planning) to help them give structured and organized advice.

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bartkappenburg
[http://www.voyando.com](http://www.voyando.com) is in a similar space but
with a different proposition (less focused on info, more on the transaction).

It's in private beta atm.

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jsumrall
Not sure how big the market would be. I feel that a lot of people can get
enough "knowledge" from [http://wikitravel.org/](http://wikitravel.org/)

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casca
Better to use [http://wikivoyage.org/](http://wikivoyage.org/) than
wikitravel. It's a fork after there were some complaints about the owners of
Wikitravel.

~~~
bartligthart
What happend? Is the content the same?

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markdown
Like any fork, the content was the same at the time of the fork. Obviously the
content is no longer the same.

[http://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Wikivoyage:Wikivoyage_and_Wiki...](http://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Wikivoyage:Wikivoyage_and_Wikitravel)

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joelrunyon
A bit off topic, but this is the first site I've seen to the use the .travel
extension in quite some time.

Why not just pick up the planmytravel.com?

~~~
aashishg-pmt
Short answer: because it's taken and expensive.

Long answer: [http://blog.planmy.travel/post/61015163485/planmy-dot-
what](http://blog.planmy.travel/post/61015163485/planmy-dot-what)

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deepaksk
The page broke and was stuck at /index.php when I tried to ask a question.
Come on folks! I wouldn't want to type out my whole query again.

~~~
aashishg-pmt
Ouch, sorry :(

We are in beta and this is the sort of feedback that's really useful. We'll be
fixing the flow so that we ask the user to sign in before they enter the
question - that way its less likely to cause this problem. Sorry again about
that.

~~~
deepaksk
No problem. All the best!

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ashwin_krish
Hey! First, Great idea! Quite impressed by it. How do you guys differentiate
from other players?

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Aarvay
Thanks Ashwin. So the main thing that differentiates us from other players is
the philosophy that we have towards travel planning which we summarised in one
of our blog posts: [http://blog.planmy.travel/post/65971193858/what-do-
instant-c...](http://blog.planmy.travel/post/65971193858/what-do-instant-cake-
mixes-have-to-do-with-travel)

~~~
ashwin_krish
Awesome! Excited to check out your new product!

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pallavjhawar
really like the idea. good stuff guys!

just want to know how do I choose who is a good travel planner? for example if
her profile states she is a food + wine expert, can I get a glimpse of how
does she think about them? like links to their blog posts etc?

~~~
aashishg-pmt
A travel planner's profile has a "Blog" tab where they post their travel
experiences, tips, etc. This is mainly meant for showcasing their travel style
and preferences so users can understand them better.

