Travel planning software: The most common bad startup idea (2012) • Hacker News Board

Re: Travel planning software: The most common bad startup idea (2012)

#21

Post by tomhoward » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 4:22 PM UTC

giarc wrote: post #17

I generally agree with Garry's take on this. However, I have used tripit.com before and it's quite a nice tool. You simply email them all receipts, booking confirmations etc and it automatically gets added to your trip itinerary. However, it doesn't seem like a super successful business. The trip planning tool I need aggregates all my accommodation searches (Airbnb, VRBO etc) into a single place and includes all rele…

TripIt's been a great product for a long time, but not the kind of app he's talking about.

The article is referring more to pre-trip planning for leisure travel, which is a very popular product to build but never successful. I've seen new ones pop up each year since I started working in travel 10+ years ago, and none has ever achieved scale.

FWIW TripIt was acquired by Concur in 2011 for about $100M, so it was seen as valuable, at least to Concur, as they were able to make it part of their offering to corporate clients, which generate huge revenues for them.

Re: Travel planning software: The most common bad startup idea (2012)

#22

Post by ghaff » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 4:23 PM UTC

giarc wrote: post #17

I generally agree with Garry's take on this. However, I have used tripit.com before and it's quite a nice tool. You simply email them all receipts, booking confirmations etc and it automatically gets added to your trip itinerary. However, it doesn't seem like a super successful business. The trip planning tool I need aggregates all my accommodation searches (Airbnb, VRBO etc) into a single place and includes all rele…

TripIt is owned by or at least integrated with Comcur which is owned by SAP. It’s extremely useful especially for business travel. When you have 3 or 4 trips in various stages of planning it’s useful to see what you’ve booked and what you haven’t.

Re: Travel planning software: The most common bad startup idea (2012)

#23

Post by bellyfullofbac » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 4:27 PM UTC

llampx wrote: post #13

The author doesn't seem to go into why travel-planning software is not successful, except for that it isn't discoverable since people only use it once in a while. I think the same can be said for a lot of services, like handymen (Angie's List) One other reason is I think that travel planning is hard. Getting multiple people to agree on a destination, hotel, fares etc is all hard work. So most people only plan things…

Surely there's a way to do it better than just over text? It's a 4-dimensional (time and space) experience isn't it: "After lunch on day 2 of the vacation, what attraction do you want to visit?", or, "When do we have time to squeeze a visit in that café that all the Instagrammers post about? [Yeah, like it or not this is the reality]".

A Miro[1]-like collaborative map would be interesting, every participant of the trip can vote what they want to see, the app can calculate the best itenerary (route and time), maybe even split up the group if some members are really not interested in some things (e.g. a visit to the local football team's museum, or the 5-star steak restaurant where there are vegan members).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pULLAEmhSho

Re: Travel planning software: The most common bad startup idea (2012)

#24

Post by bellyfullofbac » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 4:30 PM UTC

trhoad wrote: post #18

Not too sure about this take. By this logic, the car industry would be bankrupt - people don't buy cars that often. Isn't the real issue that the spend vs. frequency is off? If I spend (on average) $1 a day on an app, that's a pretty good business. If I spend $10,000 every 10 year, that's also a good business. However, if I spend $1 every year, that's likely a bad business. It's not about how often, but how often as…

Huh, I doubt cars is a good example. If I see the Ford logo every day as I pick up my car keys, and then it's under my nose as I hold my steering wheel, then when I buy a new car I'll probably consider Fords first (and maybe a terrible experience will make me avoid them).

Re: Travel planning software: The most common bad startup idea (2012)

#25

Post by sigg3 » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 4:34 PM UTC

basch wrote: post #19

Personally, I think part of it is that it hasnt been done well yet. Everyone focuses on one problem instead of looking at the entire experience holistically. A feature that rarely gets put at the top of the list is true collaboration. Traveling with just a spouse or with a group, multiple participants have different wants, needs, preferences, interests. Maybe one person is in charge of travel logistics, one in charge…

There's definitely opportunity here, but at great - perhaps even prohibitive - complexity.

I'm not gonna sleep tonight, am I?

Re: Travel planning software: The most common bad startup idea (2012)

#26

Post by jperras » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 4:34 PM UTC

basch wrote: post #19

Personally, I think part of it is that it hasnt been done well yet. Everyone focuses on one problem instead of looking at the entire experience holistically. A feature that rarely gets put at the top of the list is true collaboration. Traveling with just a spouse or with a group, multiple participants have different wants, needs, preferences, interests. Maybe one person is in charge of travel logistics, one in charge…

> Good collaborative travel software needs voting. It needs a way for teams of people to make wishlists and then helps determine which will work out the best.

A few years ago we built this exact thing for an airline that you have definitely heard of. I believe it ended up being shelved due to internal politics/shuffling, but it encompassed everything that you described except non-travel/lodging scheduling.

The problem with these kinds of systems is that you always end up having to declare one person the de facto dictator/organizer (which effectively mimics reality), and the whole experience is perhaps overkill for groups of less than 6 people who would likely just conduct the informal planning over an SMS group chat.

Re: Travel planning software: The most common bad startup idea (2012)

#27

Post by killion » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 4:49 PM UTC

I had founded Flights With Friends for group travel planning shortly before this post. I read it when it came out but knew the point about travel being rare wasn't the cause of these product failures.

The trouble with trip planning software is that making one that is 10X better than just planning it manually is very, very difficult. People love thinking about their trip and online tools don't make that more fun for them.

If someone made a tool that was better than planning your trip in your head it doesn't matter that you aren't taking a trip all the time. Because most people are always planning their next trip in their mind.

I thought I had something that made it better, but I was wrong. A couple of years later I pivoted to Suiteness to focus on just the part that worked best – selling suites and connecting rooms that hotels don't make available online.

Re: Travel planning software: The most common bad startup idea (2012)

#28

Post by rakoo » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 4:50 PM UTC

basch wrote: post #19

Personally, I think part of it is that it hasnt been done well yet. Everyone focuses on one problem instead of looking at the entire experience holistically. A feature that rarely gets put at the top of the list is true collaboration. Traveling with just a spouse or with a group, multiple participants have different wants, needs, preferences, interests. Maybe one person is in charge of travel logistics, one in charge…

Every time we travel with my friends we use the best travel planning software ever: a spreadsheet. It's the only tool that can bring together all the features you need, while giving you the flexibility of having your own organization:

- maybe you want to list everything in one sheet, maybe you want to split the "established" and the "ideas" in different sheets

- thanks to the beauty that is the Web, if something looks interesting, or you need to keep a tab on flight prices, you can just put a link to the resource with some comments. Include the link to the PDF of a 2-day excursion if you want. Add photos. Anything, really.

- if you need to vote, everyone can just put their names in front of the proposals

- with Google Docs you can even edit the same doc simultaneously and there is one single link that always point to the latest version

I do agree with the fundamental insight of TFA: if you're only going to use it once or twice a year, you don't want to take days getting familiar with the tool only to forget about it the moment you come back. And as a developer/PM you can't have every single use case prepared.

Sometimes it's better to just let people self-organize instead of trying to sell them something that's not better for them.

Re: Travel planning software: The most common bad startup idea (2012)

#29

Post by basch » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 4:50 PM UTC

jperras wrote: post #26

basch wrote: post #19

Personally, I think part of it is that it hasnt been done well yet. Everyone focuses on one problem instead of looking at the entire experience holistically. A feature that rarely gets put at the top of the list is true collaboration. Traveling with just a spouse or with a group, multiple participants have different wants, needs, preferences, interests. Maybe one person is in charge of travel logistics, one in charge…

> Good collaborative travel software needs voting. It needs a way for teams of people to make wishlists and then helps determine which will work out the best. A few years ago we built this exact thing for an airline that you have definitely heard of. I believe it ended up being shelved due to internal politics/shuffling, but it encompassed everything that you described except non-travel/lodging scheduling. The proble…

I dont think group tinder for restaurants is that complex, from the UX side.

I dont see why there has to be a leader. Why cant it be a wikipedia style, "anybody can edit anything"? Or the option to have admins and just voting participants? If there must be a leader, why cant the AI be the leader? Or if nothing else, why isnt it just a pretty interface for tallying votes. "Oh, it seems going to a football game is way more popular of an idea than any of us expected."

It should also take into account events happening that overlap the trip. If I am there week A maybe football games are an option, but if we are there week B maybe its a country concert. Is there any good local event planning for groups software? It could be as simple as "What showtime works for everyone, where are we eating, do I need to bring anything." Structured conversation, that learns over time.

Re: Travel planning software: The most common bad startup idea (2012)

#30

Post by throwaway744678 » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 4:50 PM UTC

trhoad wrote: post #18

Not too sure about this take. By this logic, the car industry would be bankrupt - people don't buy cars that often. Isn't the real issue that the spend vs. frequency is off? If I spend (on average) $1 a day on an app, that's a pretty good business. If I spend $10,000 every 10 year, that's also a good business. However, if I spend $1 every year, that's likely a bad business. It's not about how often, but how often as…

The point, I believe, is that the car is the central thing you are buying; whereas the "trip planning tool" is an accessory to the actual thing you want (the trip itself).