Tripwiser est lancé en version "beta" depuis quelques jours.

David Reichman, Founder and CEO de Tripwiser nous parle de ce site communautaire qui a un focus sur la cible des baby boomers et des voyages en famille.

La niche des voyages en famille pour la population US est sans aucun doute pleine de potentiels et Tripwiser offre un site simple à utiliser avec toutes les principales fonctionnalités des sites Travel 2.0

> David, can you tell some information about you, your team and tripwiser.com

With pleasure, thanks for asking. Most of our team, including myself, are folks with a strong technology background (I was Vice-President of Products at a large Enterprise Software company). We are all technology & travel enthusiasts who spend majority of our waking hours working, but in our spare time we take our families on various trips. In the last few years, when I was preparing trips with my family, I had to jump from site to site, from review to review, and ended up collecting bits of pieces of information in an attempt to assemble a trip, and then putting all of that on a Google map to see the route, and after that visit individual hotel's website to see what kind of accommodations available. This was too much work. So with TripWiser we set about to create something different. We decided that a site that provides ready-to-go trip itineraries that have been created by people (peers and experts), with associated activities and things to do, with descriptions and rating, with map integration and calendar integration would be something everyone can appreciate and enjoy. Travel should be fun, not project management.

>Can you give us some outline about your goals with tripwiser.com!

Our long-term goal is to become a prominent player (with your permission, I would rather not use the "L" word) in the online family travel space in general and to become the dominant player in the online trip planning space, but first we start in North America. We focus our efforts on quality of service and collecting user feedback. We believe that user feedback is essential for success in a business like ours. We are very proud of our partner network, we have already established relationships with a myriad of attractions, hotels and restaurants across the United States, but we are definitely planning on expanding this network "deeper" into the travel space, i.e. we'll be soon providing tours, vacation packages, B&B accommodations, RV parks, travel insurance, and so on, so when someone wants to plan a trip to or within the United States, they will have everything they need handy in one place.

> Tourism is a people business and a destination experience with personal encounters. How you leverage a destination or a trip thanks a web site and tools like tripwiser.com ?

You are absolutely right. Travel is a very personal matter, and I believe that this factor, i.e. the factor of personalization, is key to success in a business like ours. We let users personalize everything and match it to their travel profile. For example, you would like to visit California as a family, so you go to our site, search for California and you will get various ready-to-go itineraries to California. You can then use the "scale" and customize your trip by setting such parameters as your preferred budget and the pace of the trip, i.e. active or more relaxed. You can then pick any of the available itineraries and customize them to suit your tastes. If you've indicated that your budget for this trip is tight, the search engine will only show you affordable hotels and restaurants to chose from; if you are travelling as a couple, then you'll see hotels that don't cater to kids and so on. The search results will be changing dynamically, as you move the cursor on the scale, without reloading the page (this is when all the fancy AJAX stuff comes up). You can also share this trip with others and ask for their advice.




> Who will use your services? Do you have a target audience?

We are devoting our site to the generation of baby boomers and specifically to family travellers. They are the smartest bunch, even our company name reflects it - TripWiser. Most of us are baby boomers as well, so we know first-hand what people of this generation appreciate, we can provide a really good service to them. Unlike other travel sites that sell trips as commodities with the focus on cheapest vs. luxury. TripWiser focuses on the best value. When boomers travel, they want to do it right. They still look for a bargain, but a bargain to them means getting a good price on something of great value.

> Do you plan to work with the professional as well? Like travel agency, tour operator...or it's only for end customer?

Sure, we are already working with some leading Tour Operators in specific destinations like AlaskaTours, Starline in CA and as I mentioned before, we definitely have plans for expansion. Our business model allows for expansion 360 degrees. We are already inviting professional travel agencies to use our site for their benefits. Even right now, they can use our site to create sample itineraries and send links to their customers. Travel agents can plan an entire itinerary for their clients, including attractions, flights, cars and hotels via our site and take advantage of our partner 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? Social media and User Generated Content are the big trends for Travel 2.0?

Exactly, Web 2.0 basically means sites with user generated content or community of some sort. So likewise, a Travel 2.0 website is a site that provides travel content that is entirely or partially generated by users. I believe that Web 2.0 means a huge change for the Travel industry: all of a sudden, smaller suppliers (long tail) that can't afford expensive advertising gain advantage and can compete with the established players and connect directly with consumers. We are taking it even one step further and combine this great mashup of content with a very intuitive but powerful application. Just throwing more information at consumers won't solve the problem. Our vision is to make it easier for our customers and help them get the best value.

>We see important impact of news technologies (RSS, AJAX, podcast, blog, socialnetworking tools, Google mashup,Vidéo etc), what is your point of view in the travel area ?

I think that these technologies are very useful for customers. It won't be long before all consumer oriented sites will have to have at least one place somewhere on the site where users can do things, share their experience, provide reviews. There is no escape from this democratization, but in the travel space, this trend will grow faster. The trick is just how to use it smartly and not create new problems




>What are your taste for:
>Travel: I'm a family traveller, love the outdoors but also like to combine it with some culture as much possible with 3 young kids. I'm also a Skipper and many years ago I crossed the Atlantic, now I'm using every opportunity to combine a water attraction to our trips

>Travel destination:
United States: California (Tahoe, Yosemite, Death Valley, Carmel, Napa, Shasta lake, San Francisco, San Diego,...), New York, Boston, Washington D.C., Alaska, Hawaii, Caribbeans (Virgin Islands)
Worldwide: Barcelona (Spain), Israel, South France, North Italy, Belize, Costa Rica...

>Hotel :
I like good hotels but not necessarily fancy ones; I also enjoy camping and travelling with my family in an RV.

>Business:
On business, I travel too much and never have the time to stop and enjoy the places that I visit.

>You have the micro

The travel market is very crowded with many good players but we believe that we are doing something different and filling a real void in this market specifically for baby boomers. The way we plan to succeed is by focusing on quality, by providing the highest quality of service possible across all aspects of our business: content, design, user interface, functionalities and capabilities. For online reservations, out mantra is "best price on great value".



David et sa famille "have some fun" !!!