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

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

#51

Post by rnoorda »

I agree that travel planning is a common (and often bad) startup idea, but I disagree with the reasoning.

Part of the enjoyment of many trips, for me, is the planning. I get to learn about the city, see which places/activities I am most interested in, and gain some small level of insight into the location, the history, the culture, etc. I enjoy talking with friends about what we want to do while we're there, or asking what they liked last time they visited, so I don't feel a huge pain point here. There are certain aspects of travel I don't like planning, such as transportation, but that seems to be where travel startups have been most successful (booking flights, etc.)

Similarly, travel apps don't know what I like. A museum about a certain artist that I'm interested in? Great! A concert for a musical genre I don't have strong opinions on? Meh. And while the software could take my interests into consideration, inputting my preferences to useful levels of detail adds friction to the process.

Finally, I prefer my trips to be flexible. I rarely plan what restaurant I'm eating at; I'll walk around and see what looks good when I'm there. And if I see something near where I'm staying that seems interesting, I can do that instead of whatever I had planned for that afternoon. Travel planning generally strikes me as more limiting than freeing.

Perhaps there is something great that just hasn't been created yet, or maybe my travel needs are sufficiently unique that I'm just not the target market, but I'm not holding my breath.

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

#52

Post by munificent »

neither_color wrote: post #9

Which leads us back to trip planning. How often do people really plan trips? For the typical working adult, probably once or twice a year if you're lucky. In fact, Americans are notorious for shirking vacation, clocking the lowest rates of vacation on the planet. Twice a year just doesn't cut it. This is something I've thought about before. European friends I've met put a lot more thought into destination "discovery"…

This is a good observation. I don't know if there's a name for this psychological effect, but I observe it in many areas of life. The basic rule is:

The fewer future choices you think you will have, the more risk-averse you will be when making the current one.

You're more willing to roll the die and lose if you know you'll get more rolls in the future. Americans generally take fewer vacations than Europeans, so the opportunity cost of a single trip is higher. Because of that, it's natural to choose safer known vacations. Trying out someplace new and running the risk of it going poorly is harder to swallow when that may be your own significant trip in a year or two.

A European is more likely to gamble on a new destination because if it doesn't work out, well, they've got a couple more trips coming soon to even it all out.

(Also, there is the practical matter that Europeans have access to a much wider variety of vacations for less money because everything is smaller and closer. Americans do in fact vacation in a wide variety of places, but those are usually different states in the US, which is mostly invisible to Europeans. Most people in the US have visited a number of other states.)

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

#53

Post by ozim »

basch wrote: post #47
ozim wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what is about swipes but those are underused I agree. Does Tinder have some kind of patent on swiping decisions? What you describe here is in my opinion more interesting. Because that would be more like choosing which "all inclusive" most of people want. If typing is cut to minimum and as you mention there are mostly pretty pictures that one has to swipe left or right it might work.

Not only are swipes underused to build consensus, I dont even believe Tinder is the best example. Baby name apps are. A couple download an app, join a meeting room and swipe. Common names appear on a list. Now imagine that a restaurant picker could determine whether you never want mexican or dont want mexican today. Swipes are too often thought of as a binary left/right, when really they are more of a radial menu. Sw…

I would not go into radial menu unless it is some kind of specialist app. I would cut it down to left/right up/down - yes tinder is quite binary and does not have "maybe" as an option.

Still you have to build database of choices which will cost quite some money.

Tinder has this upside that their database of choices is building on its own.

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

#54

Post by ozim »

zerr wrote: post #42
ozim wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't want to be offensive but your insight is not really insightful. Why? Because it goes in totally wrong direction. Most people don't want to work on stuff or plan the trip - they want to pick up the phone, tell what they want and have it organized. Organizing or even putting your wishes into some forms is work and that is not what people want ... they want to have VACATIONS and not fill in some application forms.…

What about products for travel agencies? B2B that is...

I think there is quite cutthroat competition there already financed by people who own travel agencies.

You probably don't have a chance as an outsider.

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

#56

Post by basch »

ozim wrote: post #53
basch wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only are swipes underused to build consensus, I dont even believe Tinder is the best example. Baby name apps are. A couple download an app, join a meeting room and swipe. Common names appear on a list. Now imagine that a restaurant picker could determine whether you never want mexican or dont want mexican today. Swipes are too often thought of as a binary left/right, when really they are more of a radial menu. Sw…

I would not go into radial menu unless it is some kind of specialist app. I would cut it down to left/right up/down - yes tinder is quite binary and does not have "maybe" as an option. Still you have to build database of choices which will cost quite some money. Tinder has this upside that their database of choices is building on its own.

Technically tinder is already more than binary, as upswipe is a different form of positive swipe than right swipe. It works there. Theres really no reason that throwing a picture to one of the four corners cant work.

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

#57

Post by basch »

munificent wrote: post #48
killion wrote: post #27

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 t…

Said more succinctly: It's hard to make a successful product that reduces the time people spend doing something they love to do. Some ways I could imagine addressing this and the problem the article talks about: * Aim to make travel planning not easier (i.e. less time-consuming) but more fun. Treat the app more like a game or media app where users spend more time planning their trip by using the app in enjoyable ways…

Even more succinctly: establishing consensus should be fun in and of itself. People dont know what they dont know. They dont want to plan. They do want to daydream.

Make voting addictive and make the tally results easy to interpret, and aggregated. Not only what restaurants got picked, but a sum of them by type. Popeyes may have gotten 3 votes, but "Mexican Cantinas" may have gotten 4, albeit 4 different restaurants.

Things like "what cities I want to visit with my friends" may or may not change between years.

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

#59

Post by dekmetzi »

trhoad wrote: post #20
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…

And a great example of this? Airbnb. Pretty much disproved the entire post.

have used airbnb's planner - it's great. Admittedly, not in the past year - but then I haven't travelled, either.

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

#60

Post by basch »

rakoo wrote: post #28
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 look…

>you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem.

There's no way I'm turning kids loose on a spreadsheet to tally their votes for a Disney vacation.

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