It seems logical that they should or at leastprovide links to those that can.

Great post; thanks for sharing your insights.

My company, FatPassport, has a site in alpha and while we have lots of work to do, users tell us it is already one of the best places on the web for travelers to determine where they should go, based on their specific timing, interests, and budget. Let me know what you think!

Bob Thomas
CEO, FatPassport

We have already developed an Anywhere to Costa Rica budget flights widget. I’ll get in touch via email.

Regards,
Martino

Merry Christmas everyone!!!!

If that is what it is, and it is user-friendly, reliable and reasonably priced, I’d buy it in a heartbeat.

If the visitors could then go on to book flights at competitive prices, the tool would be more valuable to me whether or not I received a commission on the flight.

Much more important than the pittance that airlines are paying is the fact that once they have bought the flight they are committed to travel.

In any case if anyone is developing this put me on your list.

At the very heart of WhichBudget model is A to Anywhere and Anywhere to B. That is where our name comes from: “which budget airline flies from A” or “which budget airline flies to B”.

Straight from the homepage, you can choose “I want to fly to Morocco”, then choose your arrival airport and we list all destinations from which you can fly, with budget airlines, to that destination.

And we have the widget too (and an iframe), which any DTM can incorporate into their website. See http://www.whichbudget.com/from-anywhere-to-morocco.html as an example.

We always focused on the “crowd” not on money! Airline XYZ does not pay commission but has budget fares? We will add it! Our visitors come back to WhichBudget over-and-over-again because they know we will: a) have a comprehensive, independently put together list of budget airlines; and b) always link them to the cheapest source for booking their flight (most often the airline website itself), even if we could make more money by directing them to an OTA instead.

We heard you though! In 2010, we plan to improve our product and move much more towards what you describe above as “inspiration website”: as well as adding more scheduled airlines to improve the offering, we will source inspirational ideas from our travel mag: TheTravelMagazine.net

Regards,
Martino Matijevic
Founder & CEO
WhichBudget.com

Thanks! I didn’t know I got a link there. Sweet.

So, happy holidays and thanks for all! Maybe I will get more link love in my stocking? darn.

Take Care,
Thomas

I know it’s nearly Christmas, but our goodwill doesn’t extend to link love.

Besides, you got one link in the author title.

Thanks for your comments (they are spot on : )

I would like to talk to you about a tour operator system that I have been thinking about. Can you email me? jbt@journeybeyondtravel.com and tom@thomashollowell.com?

Bummer I don’t get any link love in my post above! c’mon : )

Thanks!

Thomas

Anywhere to B is unlikely to be the next great thing (Josh did I say that, not sure I did!). What it could be is the next 1000 small things.

With A to Anywhere inspiration sites you have to magic up traffic out of thin air – from advertising, brand building, SEO – all that normal stuff that we know and love.

With Anywhere to B you are working on the traffic from real companies who have real customers travelling to that destination. Thomas from Morocco has an example of such a site. They probably get 50-200 bookings a month (not that I know who they are, just that is standard stats for a niche tour operator selling holidays). Get 1000 of them carrying your tool (which should be information based, not necessarily transactional) and you could build a solid revenue stream (from selling the tool on a subscription basis). Won’t be an overnight success, but would keep solid revenue coming in whilst working on looking at the data from the other perspective and building up your inspiration site that will exit for millions!

Great article and pretty well thought out. We watch out for Morocco travel news and such and your article came up. I wanted to present to you our company, Journey Beyond Travel LLC.

We are a small, eco-friendly, and culturally responsible tour operator who live and work in Morocco. We have an awesome Website (which I run) and do special tours to one destination. We do not even get involved in plane tickets (which if you know the business, you know is a dying breed of a way to make money).

So, because you mentioned Morocco, have not been impressed lately, and wanted someone who really cares about people’s experiences rather than where the money is at, I can tell you we are those people. And, while not so many of exist in Morocco, other tour operators around the world offer an intimate experience and truly care about your journey, its impact, and what you gain out of it to share with others.

Additionally, I see Website starting up everyday offering generic travel excursions. Yes, they suck. I can also say that their chances of making it big time are nill to none. Moreover, niche marketing, and focus is the way travel is evolving. People are getting tired of generic big bus tours and that’s where we come in. So, don’t give up, we do exist. It just takes some searching, although we rank pretty high for our keywords.

Take Care!

Thomas Hollowell

Totally agree that Anywhere to B is an opportunity. In a small way, contextual ad networks are in this space – if you are on a page about Paris, Google ads give you some clues of how to go on holiday there. What’s needed now are some more useful, intuitive, contextual booking tools that destination sites can utilise to push users into the booking funnel for that destination, having inspired them to travel there. Simple contextual ad units will become multi-layered booking paths, and the company that can do this well will be on to a winner, because there are loads of travel guide sites, inspiration sites and newspaper sites out there who find it really really hard to monetise their content.

Josh Steinitz
CEO
NileGuide

When Planeteye was born, the idea was that geo-tagged photos would inspire people to help make those decisions. We added in tons of relevant information on dozens of destinations world wide to help fill in the gaps. Our premise is that using photos. a map, videos and user reviews to help plan that trip for business or pleasure would make doing so easier. Travel today is a pain. If we could ease the suffering in the planning stage we thought we would be on to something.

I still believe in that premise. I feel that the consumer today is faces with the problem of too much information. It is simply too difficult to navigate the waters. As a result, speaking from personal experience, all my travel, personal or business is now booked directly with the supplier.

Today, what we are trying to do is help those suppliers, the DMO’s the CVB’s, airlines, hotels etc with their presentation. The truth is, when it comes to tourism content (if you will), they have the best information out of anyone. We try to help them sell their tours in Morocco by using mapping technology, photos, itinerary tools, videos and reviews.

Again, kudos to the great post Alex and for Tnooz for becoming the place where these discussions can take place.

Sorry for rambling.

Jonah

As Daniele says, that is what Skyscanner is doing too, however, we’ve opted for a travel concierge model, which provides the same end product (reservations) but in a different way.

We offer ‘anywhere’ to B searches on our free widget (http://api.skyscanner.net/api/ajax/snippets/search-panel/introduction.html) and have done for well over a year.

Lots of sites are using the widget, from big tourist organisations like VisitScotland.com – to ‘mom and pop’ B&B sites.

We also offer A to ‘anywhere’ searches as standard.

(And of course A to B!).

cheers

Sam
Skyscanner.net

I don’t know of any sites who use it though (and have not done any research).