Triporama Blog

Triporama received a fantastic Holiday gift at the end of 2008. On CBS’ Early Show, in a segment about finding the best travel deals, Travel + Leisure’s Deputy Editor Laura Begley included Triporama in a list of what CBS called, “literally the crème de la crème of the online travel world.” She said they reviewed thousands of sites to come up with their list of 33 top websites, of which they featured 8 sites — including Triporama. See the full list, which includes great sites for deal hunting and travel planning like Kayak, Farecast, and Lastminute.com, at:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/12/29/earlyshow/living/travel/main4689469.shtml or view the video clip of the show segment.

Travel + Leisure just named Triporama one of the Top Travel Websites for 2008! This is great for Triporama, obviously, but personally I’m pumped up since T+L is one of my favorite travel magazines. Their travel writing is top-notch and they have many relevant, easy to use tips about a wide range of travel. I have spent a lot of time reading it both online and in their magazine — particularly their family guide.

View the Triporama listing in the Top Travel Websites for 2008 article at: http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/t-l-top-travel-websites-of-2008/?page=5.

Explore the complete list to discover other unique and helpful travel planning sites like Farecast, TripIt, and Zicasso at: http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/t-l-top-travel-websites-of-2008, or pick up a copy of the December issue of the magazine.

I am such a huge fan and avid reader of Travel + Leisure, both for business and pleasure, that this press really made my week!

Man oh man, the day-to-day (and often the night-to-night) business of working on Triporama has never been so much fun as reading the group trip experiences submitted from users for our Best Group Vacation Contest!

Some of the unforgettable highlights from the trips that we named contest winners and finalists are:

• Surfing pristine, tourist-free beaches in Northern Sumatra, Indonesia
• Outrunning a flash flood in Buckskin Gulch/Paria River, Utah only to get hit by two feet of water crossing a wash on the drive out
• Befriending a curious marmot while escaping civilization hiking Berg Lake in the Canadian Rockies
• Squeezing through tiny holes in the rock to swim through 40 degree water and wade through “nipple deep” mud in California Caverns
• Taking Bachelor Party inspiration from the Will Farrell movie, and getting their party on at Taledaga race way sporting “handlebar mustaches, tight jeans, half shirts, and a vintage Ricky Bobby Wonder Bread race outfit”

There were many other awesome activities from the other shared group trip experiences too, including sailing around Sicily, Ladies Surf Camp in Costa Rica, repelling down water falls in Maui, golfing in Ireland, attending Junior Hockey Championships in the Czech Republic, and the New Year’s Eve party in Lucca’s town square.

Check out the submissions at: http://www.triporama.com/guide/sharedtrips-all

Picking a Grand Prize winner wasn’t easy. The winner was the Ukrainian Road Trip, a truly unique and off-the-beaten-track group travel story about a group of travelers who became fast friends through their experience traveling together.

Thanks so much to all who entered and submitted their great and unforgettable trips. You have inspired me and will undoubtedly inspire other Triporama users plan some truly incredible trips together.

We may have spent a bit too much time trying to come up with the ‘right’ prize for Triporama’s Best Group Vacation Contest. We were discussing lots of ideas that fit with both the spirit of traveling with friends and family and the sharing of travel stories. We discussed iPods, digital cameras, gifts of free travel, and travel gear. I think a Shetland pony may have been brought up at one point too.

Luckily, I have a mutual friend who introduced me to the founder of Blurb.com (an awesome startup also located in the Bay Area). It turns out that they were excited to participate and offered a really great prize. So, the person who submits the best group trip experience gets to build their own complete book using Blurb’s software. They can either build it themselves or collaborate with their group via a new Blurb tool on Facebook, called Groupbook – here’s a demo of how it works. Either way the result will be a professional-quality book, published and shipped to the winner and up to 9 others from their group (up to a $1,000.00 value total). Also, during the contest Blurb is offering Triporama users $7 off of any book created, by using promotion code “triporama” at checkout.

In my experience, creating a book about a one-of-a-kind trip, birth of a child, or even your own family cookbook is super fun. When the book I produced recently about my destination wedding in Italy showed up at my door, it was like I got to experience the trip all over again. Blurb offers an easy, totally unique way for us to preserve memories while tapping into the inner-author in us all…and these books make great gifts, I used mine for our anniversary!

Do we have the perfect prize for the launch of user submitted group trips on the Triporama site? We’ll see how it goes…out, but I know this — I obviously wish I was eligible to win. Learn more or take a shot at winning the book for your group at: www.triporama.com/contest

Triporama was one of three companies (along with Starwood Hotels & Resorts and Yahoo! Travel) recently interviewed for a Forrester report, “Demystifying Tagging for Travel Sellers”. As stated in this report, “tagging is an extraordinarily flexible way to label and share existing or user-generated content“. Forrester recognized Triporama’s leadership position with tagging technology, noting that the Triporama Bookmarks tool was the first introduced by an online travel site. Here’s their straightforward description of the tool:

“Acknowledging that travelers visit many different Web sites while planning a trip, Triporama’s bookmarking tool lets travelers collect, label, and share what they’re looking at all over the Web with other members of their group.”

As a Triporama member, you can use your own tags to organize web research in whatever way best suits your group trip planning. Looking for the perfect place for dinner? A tag like “Friday Dinner” can help separate the research (and discussion) from the broader list of restaurant options. For accommodations, use tags to delineate alternatives according to neighborhood, type (hotel, vacation rental, etc.), budget, amenities, and/or any other aspect that’s important to you.

Last month, we extended our Bookmarks functionality to make it easy to store and share the group travel deals and web research from our Group Travel Guide with others in a group. We also added over 30 new tags (such as theme parks, weekend getaways, and spa) to make it easier to explore content in our Group Travel Guide.

Visit our web site for more information on how Triproama Bookmarks work.

Triporama is honored to be nominated as one of Webware’s Top 250 Web 2.0 applications! Webware, from the fine folks at CNET, is “where computer users can learn about new and useful Web applications”. Their editors selected the Top 250 from over 2,000 unique nominations. Other nominees in the publishing category, alongside Triporama, include Adobe Flash, Google Analytics, and weebly.com (for creating your own web 2.0 site).

Webware will name the Top 100 based on the ten services in each of their categories that receive the most votes through June 11. To vote in the publishing category, go to http://www.webware.com/html/ww/100/2007/publishing.html (for all other categories, see http://www.webware.com/html/ww/100.html). Note that you can only vote for one application per category. Need we mention that we would love to have you vote for Triporama?

Regardless of whether or not you vote, this is a great list to explore to find out about some of the best Web 2.0 applications.

We launched a new version of our Group Trip Planner today!

We are focusing our site development efforts so you can best tap into the tremendous energy that your group of friends and/or family can collectively bring to the trip planning process. If you’re like most travelers, you really enjoy spending time and sharing travel experiences with your friends and family. The trip planning itself should also be a fun and creative process. Nobody should be forced to take on more responsibility in this than they want to.

Among the new features we have introduced is a fully collaborative day-by-day trip plan building tool. We have also added functionality that makes it easy to organize and compile to-do lists and to assign tasks. For a quick overview of these new features and more, please read our What’s New page.

This launch came the day after Triporama was included among AOL Travel’s “Top Ten Travel Sites You Should Know About. We’re psyched to be included!

We hope you check out the new Group Trip Planner and let us know what you think (via the feedback form on the site)!

At Triporama, we always get fired up when a top travel supplier comes up with a new way to make group travel booking easier.

Hilton Hotels has launched a tool on their web site that gives group organizers a one-stop way to find, organize, and book their conferences, meetings, and events globally. Hilton’s E-vents was created to help organizers find and assign guest rooms, arrange meeting rooms, choose food and beverage menus, and select and reserve audio and visual tools. Organizers can view group accommodation and meeting options around the world.

Overall, this is a well designed and easy to use tool and we hope to see others following Hilton’s lead. Give it a try at: http://www.hilton.com/en/hi/promotions/learneevents/index.jhtml

Note: Hilton also offers a newsletter with deals and incentives for groups.

It always feels good to get positive recognition. Triporama was recently named one of the “50 best travel sites you’ve never heard of,” by luggageonline.com. Triporama is listed at number 2 in the Social Travel Networks section, right below igougo.com, a really great community travel website, and right above the indispensable travel review site, tripadvisor.com. Check out the full list of great travel sites at luggageonline.com. There are many helpful, non-traditional travel sites that can provide great trip planning information on the list!

Got a nice traffic boost yesterday after getting picked up by Emily Chang’s eHub (part of the Web 2.0 workgroup of premium weblogs) and with the review of Triporama published by CNET’s Rafe Needleman. We really enjoyed Rafe’s review — he definitely explored our site extensively, understood the nature of our business, and took the time to write a thoughtful article.