I spend the better part of every working day using travel related websites and trip planning tools. I talk to the people behind the startups, find their plans, analyze their thinking, their potential. First time I wrote about Flipkey, I knew it was a winner. And then TripAdvisor put their money where my mouth was. Not gloating, just making the point that when it comes to travel websites, I know what I’m talking about.

And let me tell you, TravelMuse is the best thing on the market right now. No exceptions. I’ve been tracking them for months now, and Kevin Fliess has a business model which is tuned to tap the future of online travel, and their implementation - the tools and the user interfaces, the depth and local knowledge of their destination guide writers, the way they’re marketing it and building a community and user base - Its all as good as it gets. When they released their Plan It widget, it was a step in the right direction, and its going to increase their reach in leaps and bounds.

And now they just launched the TravelMuse Planner at DEMO, along with over 70 other startups. An excerpt from their blog shows some of the new things this release enables you to do on TravelMuse now.

• Create a day-by-day schedule of your planned activities,, restaurants you’re eating at and places you’re staying from our repository of more than 100,000 points of interest and 90,000 hotels spanning hundreds of destinations globally. Or you can add any page you find on the Web.
• Invite people you’re traveling with to collaborate on the plans. Everyone can add research and modify the schedule, and everyone gets notified immediately of changes to the itinerary.
• Network with people whose travel advice you trust. View your friends’ trip plans and repurpose their research.
• Keep apprised of the trips your friends are planning (if they choose to let you see them) and give them the benefit of your experiences.
• Combine research you find on the Web with reference information and travel articles on TravelMuse, and easily drag and drop these items into a scheduler. You can even move entire days around when the need arises!

Again, my point with all this blather is to hammer home the point that TravelMuse is going places, and what they’re building is the future of online travel planning. And then Robert Scoble comes along and says (H/T to Elliott) that he visited each of the sites showcased at Demo, and issues a blanket judgment that all of them ’suck’.  Um, I visited every single company on the Demo list. Amazingly lame companies. Amazingly lame web sites. Is this it? Am I missing something? 

(Update: In response to the blowback, Scoble makes this post, where he says “Keep in mind I’m only talking about the Websites, not the company or the product/service.” From the excerpt above, where he says the ‘companies’ are lame, and the one below, where he again specifically mentions companies, does it look like he’s talking about the websites? Add dishonest to misleading….)

I can’t speak for the other 70 odd companies, but where it concerns TravelMuse, I’m afraid, for all his rep and his background, Scoble is as wrong as he could be.  He asks his readers - Would you write about any of these companies? Did any of them solve a problem you have? Would any of you fund any of these companies?

In answer - 1. Yes, I have written about it (twice before and this is the third time).

2. Yes, they have solved problems I had - Before TravelMuse came along, I was searching for a trip planning site with at least an ounce of humanity. TravelMuse makes it easy to combine human opinion from across the net with the trip planning tools, all in one place. And if you read their excellent destination guides, you won’t be needing to buy those unwieldy Lonely Planet guidebooks. This NYC guide, for instance, hits all the necessary points - things to do, ticket pricing, museums, budget tips, local transport, etc.

3. Yes,  if I were a VC looking to plunk down a few million on a travel website, TravelMuse would be at the top of my list.

In summary, note to Scoble - Very impressive resume and all that, but stop being a pretentious blowhard. Being superficial might work for the short-term, but I suggest that in situations where you lack serious knowledge of an entire industry and its upcoming trends, take the time and trouble to talk to some people and do some research first.

Posted on September 8th, 2008 by PLing
Filed under: Travel News