Well regarded content site Travellr says it will retain its core and free Q&A service as it heads toward an official launch after securing funding from a major travel insurance firm.
World Nomads Group bought into the business in September 2009, a mere six months after co-founders Ian Cumming and Scott Woodhouse threw open the service from an internet cafe in the South-East Asian backpackers retreat of Laos.
Cumming says the next 12 months will mostly be taken up with working out a wider revenue model for the site as well as increase its distribution.
Travellr has secured a handful of plaudits (and two awards) in 2009 despite still not having an official launch programme or PR.
The value of its investment from World Nomads has not been disclosed.
The system works by directing a traveller’s questions to locals or past-visitors in real-time across e-mail and social networks.
Cumming says:
“One of the advantages of our service over traditional website forums is that we intelligently recommend questions based on a user’s whereabouts and interests, so we hope to get faster, more relevant answers to travel questions.”
The Q&A concept has had mixed fortunes across the web despite travel being an seemingly obvious vertical in which it could work.
Many thought Yahoo! Answers would have taken off in a big way for travel through perhaps a number of white label integrations on third party sites, although smaller content sites such as Travellerspoint, VirtualTourist and BootsNAll have secured a loyal following over the years.
The classic forums still appear to also be one of the most well used methods of getting advice, through services such as the Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree.
Thanks for mentioning some of us oldies Kevin
It’s great to see this model seems to be back in focus again, also with attention having gone to localyte (seems similar in a lot of ways) at the last phocuswright conference. Travellr seems like an interesting spin indeed, so I hope it works out well for them. The model of sending the question to those with a prior interest, previous visitors or locals is a great one and works really well. When we took over the ‘database of travel helpers’ in 2002, the first thing we did was link it to forum questions about those countries. I’m especially curious to see how the social network tie-in works out for them!