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A while back I was thinking about a trip planning product and my enthusiasm was deflated when I read Gary's post. I remember one of my main take-aways was that

by aacook 11y ago

A while back I was thinking about a trip planning product and my enthusiasm was deflated when I read Gary's post. I remember one of my main take-aways was that travel just isn't something people do very often. So even if they use and love your product, the chances of them remembering you the next time they need to plan a trip (a year later?) are slim. I ran into this same problem working on a product rental marketplace (bouncy castle rentals, wedding tents, etc) and it was definitely a struggle. We had to constantly acquire new users. That said, I wonder if there's something here if you focus on business travelers. (1) Some business people travel quite often and (2) Lots of people pay for travel agents or use internal resources to plan their trips. Recently Paul English, the co-founder of Kayak, launched Lola. It's sort of like Magic or Operator but travel-specific. May be worth checking out: http://lola.co http://lola.co. Another area I like about travel is safety. When you're traveling to a foreign place, it's easy to assume a given area is safe ("It's only 2 miles from the city center!"). I'd pay money to have access to a real local to warn me of areas to stay away from and let me know of things I shouldn't miss.

Sreyanth 11y ago
We want to retain our customers by providing them the best "benefit - cost" value when compared to the competition. To make sure people remember us the next time they plan a trip, we surely want to stay in touch with the user by suggesting new places, trip plans etc., (to be noted that we get this information from the user's email and calendar - we would be using push notifications to contact the user. Some website suggests, forgot which one, that most people go on a trip when suggested via email or text). And we hope that our choice of the name 128Highstreet will make it appear among the top in the apps menu in many mobiles, thus catching the user's attention every time they open up the menu. We were pretty much looking at various types of customers who would be needing a product like 128HS - 1. Consultants (who got their travel scheduled, and have some leisure time as per their schedule) 2. Casual travelers (like the normal customer, who cares to travel once or less) 3. Students (grad trips, weekend trips) 4. Tour operators (people who sell packages to customers) 5. Travel agents (who earn commission on the amount of money the end customer ends up spending) We are in a way similar to Lola, but we want to eliminate humans from the process. No doubt, we would be needing human support in the initial days to get going. At 128HS, we care about the customer's experience - and that's exactly how we are planning to not let the customer leave us. We plan to include safety and must visit places in the itinerary - we also plan to warn the user if an unsafe place is planned to be visited at an unsafe time. To speak more, since we track the user's trip (using the GPS on phone, 128HS is a mobile app BTW), we will be able to, in real-time, suggest changes to the user and cancel/book new hotels/events/flights without any booking/cancellation charges.

by aacook 11y ago

Sreyanth 11y ago

We want to retain our customers by providing them the best "benefit - cost" value when compared to the competition. To make sure people remember us the next time they plan a trip, we surely want to stay in touch with the user by suggesting new places, trip plans etc., (to be noted that we get this information from the user's email and calendar - we would be using push notifications to contact the user. Some website suggests, forgot which one, that most people go on a trip when suggested via email or text). And we hope that our choice of the name 128Highstreet will make it appear among the top in the apps menu in many mobiles, thus catching the user's attention every time they open up the menu. We were pretty much looking at various types of customers who would be needing a product like 128HS - 1. Consultants (who got their travel scheduled, and have some leisure time as per their schedule) 2. Casual travelers (like the normal customer, who cares to travel once or less) 3. Students (grad trips, weekend trips) 4. Tour operators (people who sell packages to customers) 5. Travel agents (who earn commission on the amount of money the end customer ends up spending) We are in a way similar to Lola, but we want to eliminate humans from the process. No doubt, we would be needing human support in the initial days to get going. At 128HS, we care about the customer's experience - and that's exactly how we are planning to not let the customer leave us. We plan to include safety and must visit places in the itinerary - we also plan to warn the user if an unsafe place is planned to be visited at an unsafe time. To speak more, since we track the user's trip (using the GPS on phone, 128HS is a mobile app BTW), we will be able to, in real-time, suggest changes to the user and cancel/book new hotels/events/flights without any booking/cancellation charges.