TripHub est un site Travel 2.0 qui permet de planifier et d'organiser gratuitement ses voyages de groupes.

Véritable "hub" de voyages, TripHub possède quelques atouts uniques.

John Pope, VP Marketing de TripHub Inc nous présente le fonctionnement de TripHub et donne son avis sur le Travel 2.0 et les dernières tendances du etourisme.

>John, you are the VP Marketing of a great travel 2.0 web site, TripHub. Can you tell us the story and some facts about it?

I'd love to tell you and the Les Explorers readers about TripHub (www.triphub.com)! The company was founded in 2005 by our CEO Josh Herst, an early member of the Expedia team. Josh was aware of the complex coordination requirements involved in planning and organizing group trips but noticed a lack of innovation coming out of the established online travel companies. So he decided to tackle the large opportunity we sometimes refer to as the next frontier in online travel.

We launched the service in March of 2006 as the best place to plan, coordinate, and share any gathering that involves travel. Anyone who has ever organized a family reunion, get-away with friends, or any other group trip or event is familiar with the challenges (headaches!) involved in keeping track of who's coming, making group decisions, and coordinating plans. TripHub provides a central place to discuss plans, share trip details and collaborate on decisions. Our integrated suite of services leverages familiar services like e-mail and blogs to make trip planning easy and fun. We also make it easy to find the right hotels, flights, and activities by providing access to deals from multiple travel providers.

We're re-defining the term "group travel" to include smaller gatherings and groups traveling on disparate itineraries. (The industry has historically, generally defined "groups" as 10 or more people traveling on the same itinerary.) Also, we are focused on existing social networks - your friends, your family, your club, your team, etc. TripHub is not about browsing other people's trips or finding random people to travel with. And finally, TripHub is not a travel agency. We do not sell travel products and services directly. Rather, we merchandise great products and services to our customers based on our unique customer insights.

>Can you give us some outline about your goals with TripHub?

We want to make it super easy for people to share life experiences. Our philosophy is that the trip planning process should be as much fun as the trip itself and we firmly believe that the right way to do that is to listen to customers and build great, easy to use services that meet their needs.

>Who uses TripHub? Any special profile and country for TripHub group & community users?

Our initial marketing focus has been the US consumer market though anyone in the world can use TripHub. Our customers represent a diverse audience ranging from moms, to young bachelors, to ministers, to soccer coaches. We see all kinds of trips being planned including multi-generational family vacations and reunions, golf, ski and spa getaways with friends, celebrations (milestone birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, bachelor/ette parties), sports tournaments, faith based-travel, and many other trip types. If you're interested, we've posted some data about our customers and how they use TripHub on our corporate blog. Groups using TripHub range in size from a handful of travelers to over 100 although the majority include fewer than 10 travelers. While the majority travel to US destinations, almost a third are traveling abroad with quite a few heading to Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

>Any advice for people who start to use TripHub?

Setting up a trip is easy, fast, and free! Simply click "start now" on the home page and enter whatever details you have. You do not need to know everything to get started. Invite others to the trip so they can help you make decisions. Once your details are entered, you can start to create a centralized Event Schedule or start a discussion with your group on your Trip Blog.




Group Trip Advisor, a Blog Devoted to Group Travel it's a great tool, full of information. Who manages this blog?

Jocelyn Milici manages our Group Trip Advisor blog. She's created some very useful planning guides including a great group reservation guide that includes an insightful critique on group discounts.

>Internet is going faster and we talk now about Web 2.0 and Travel 2.0. What do you think about this evolution in the tourism & hotel market place? Word-of-mouth marketing and User Generated Content are the big trends for Travel 2.0?

We embrace the change and wish the pace was even faster! TripHub is focused on facilitating communications and idea sharing within social groups. And our invitation and RSVP service is core to TripHub's word of mouth marketing. But online group travel is another trend that will see significant traction in 2007. We recently co-funded a group travel research project that concluded the industry was missing a huge opportunity. The research aligns closely with our experience and we're excited to be at the forefront of this emerging market and to be a catalyst for industry growth.

>We see important impact of new technologies (RSS, AJAX, podcast, blog, socialnetworking tools, Google mashup,Vidéo etc), what is your point of view ? Do you plan to use more Web 2.0 stuff on TripHub ? What about your development and project for TripHub?

We plan to use whatever technologies make planning a trip fun and easy. I'm not sure that most of our customers know or care what Web 2.0 is. They just want it to work! In 2007, we'll add more mapping and facilities for post trip memory sharing.

>Can DMO's and Tourism Board become TripHub Partners?

Yes! We welcome DMOs and Tourism boards. The majority of TripHub customers are planning their leisure trips more than 2 months in advance and return week after week to participate in trip planning, creating numerous highly targeted merchandising opportunities. Groups using TripHub represent thousands of dollars in spending per trip.

>What are your personal taste for travel?

I love to travel! Travel changes people and provides perspective - something that is increasingly important as the need for global understanding grows. I love to travel light and see as much as I can when I'm on the road. My camera is always within reach!

>Travel destination?

Southern Vietnam. Life changing.

>Hotel?

Any hotel with a local atmosphere good bar, delicious food, and great people watching works for me.

>You have the micro:

People are saying great things about TripHub. I hope your readers will use TripHub and let us know how we can make it even better!
Voyages heureux!