Indeed, both are primarily focussed on influencing the undecided purchaser of travel content.

• Fish: “…you’re not a cat!”
• Cat:  “I am indeed a cat, and this, indeed, is a hat.”

Taking the lead from Dr Suess, my strong belief is that a difference of opinion in nomenclature is immaterial for the purpose understanding what it takes to win in this space.

In the early days of online travel a lot of effort was put into improving the shopping function for travelers who knew exactly when and where they wanted to travel. Displaying availability and price on the one page was a major step forward, but one that today we all take for granted.

Then the calendar display was added, and travelers were also shown the lowest price one or two days either side of their preferred date of travel.

Over time the calendar has grown to a month or more, and therefore the shopping experience has improved for those travelers willing to show some flexibility; but at its heart search has still required a known destination and an approximate known date of travel.

This is now changing, and changing in a major way.

The second thing that is changing is that travel inspiration is not far behind mobile, and maybe even close to social when we are talking 2010 buzz words.

A lot of airlines and other travel suppliers plus intermediaries are spending serious time and money trying to make their websites more appealing to the undecided holiday maker.

At the same time, many independent companies are also trying to carve out a meaningful role for themselves by being the destination site to influence the undecideds – those leisure travelers yet to commit to a destination.

But are these two really that different? Once the calendar gets to a certain size thereby eliminating the need to commence the search by inputting dates of travel, and especially once the requirement to start a search with a fixed destination is removed, then we have moved into a new realm of open ended search that is continually refined by the user. If the old search was iterative (start, stop, go back to start again), the new search is more of a sifting process.

When you think about it, how do we generally reach conclusions in any matter of uncertainty?

We typically start by gathering a set of known facts, asking around to supplement this information, and then we sift through all the information discarding pieces along the way until we reach a decision that we consider appropriate – travel technology is now starting to replicate this process.

If what I have written above is correct, then it stands to reason that reinventing travel search along these lines cannot be separated from the current quest to own travel inspiration.

If search and inspiration as categories are being condensed, where is the big outstanding question? In my opinion, the question yet to be answered is this:

Does the search component of travel inspiration require more technological muscle and grunt, or is it social over science and personal contacts over proprietary cache?

Or to put it another way, is technology in and of itself, the entire answer for inspiration?

To illustrate the point, I’ll use two very different approaches launched recently by major players in travel who have both come at the search part of inspiration from different corners.

The first example, and one that launched in May, is Kayak Explore. Rather than rely on using the TripAdvisor approach (detailed below), they have gone for a more technology driven solution that turns search upside down by obliterating the need to have a destination in mind prior to commencing the shopping.

By loading more data into the browser, and incorporating the use of sliders into the user interface, the intention is to create a kind of playground or sand box where the results are continually narrowed down until seeking inspiration leads to action, hopefully an intent to purchase.

TripAdvisor recently launched Trip Friends using the Social Graph from Facebook. This definitely uses a more social approach to search, as it relies partly on what Bob Offutt from PhoCusWright described to me previously as “the wisdom of crowds”.

If I start my travel search with a totally clean slate and then whittle down the options based on the experiences of my friends, then my inspiration is coming from trusted sources and I am much less reliant on marketing from suppliers or advice from less trusted sources.

I have put Kayak and TripAdvisor in different camps trying to answer the same question – where should I travel to next? But there may be a third option.

More similar to the TripAdvisor approach, but taking the wisdom of crowds one step further, it is the approach that retail sites such as Amazon have been using for years.

The cues to buy are coming not from people I personally know, but from people who the system has determined have similar tastes to me based on past purchase behaviour.

Or my search history on the site. Or any one of the increasing number of data points I have left behind in my history of online activity.

Adding this layer on top of some of the powerful computing platforms being built to support non destination driven search could be a very compelling combination. And if travel inspiration is anything like online retail, then a profitable combination also.

Using the Inspiration Footprint Matrix that was first introduced in a previous Tnooz post, I’ve plotted how the initiatives described above have potentially moved the location of TripAdvisor and Kayak insofar as it pertains to their role in travel inspiration.

When this matrix was first published there were a couple of good comments questioning the axis, amongst other things.

Based on this feedback I removed OTAs from the chart as this was way too broad, but I’ve stuck with the original axis.

Price may have merit as one of the axis as you could split inspiration websites offering high priced items versus those at the lower end, but often a trip comprises of a combination of higher priced items (the flight) with some lower priced items (transfers) so I’m not convinced this would hold up as travel search expands to cover a wider range of travel related needs.

I could write a lot more, but at this point a debate amongst readers would be much more interesting; not just on the Travel Inspiration Matrix, but also on the overall question of whether travel inspiration and new travel search are becoming almost synonymous – or are they totally different concepts that should remain separate.

Also, will the travel inspiration site of the future be more technology driven or social, and if the latter, then what will be the relative importance of friends versus strangers with similar tastes and habits when it comes to guiding purchase?

So many questions still to be answered before this topic is put to rest!

The Prague-based low cost airline, which is a subsidiary of the IcelandAir Group, has integrated a white label version of the Meteobonus system into its existing booking engine, allowing passengers to effectively insure themselves against poor weather.

The system works by calculating a flat fee (or premium) for each passenger based on length of trip and likelihood of bad weather based on historical data.

For example, a six-day trip from the UK to the Spanish island of Ibiza will cost around Euro 15 per person. In the event of rain or a lack of sun, Meteobonus pays out Euro 30 per day or rain.

AirSavings-owned Meteobonus says if more rain than average falls in a destination during a traveller’s trip (or if less sunshine is recorded), the dividend is automatically paid.

Meteorological data is based on the nearest weather station to the destination, and corroborated by the World Meteorological Association.

Unsurprisingly, Meteobonus is touting the service as the “next big revenue generator” for airlines hungry to develop more ancillary products.

It has bold plans to roll out the service to other airlines across the world, having secured data agreements with 250 weather stations in Canada and Australia and a further 450 in the US.

The company plans to also extend the service to include ski holiday later this year.

The Flipboard is much more than about sorting and presenting our social network feeds in a beautiful form.

As I hinted last week, it will not only change media, it will change commerce and, therefore, travel as we know it. Here is why…

Aesthetics touch our emotions and amplify our will to engage, be it business, art, religion or politics.

This was true for divine ideals in the renaissance, it was true for politics when the modern newspaper was born and it’s true for business today for companies like Apple, Virgin, Monocle magazine etc. Aesthetics drives engagement and business.

So I believe that the Flipboard will drive more people to buy the iPads and to start use the social networks to a larger degree than before, as it is looks great and is easy to use, and simply because people will be more engaged with content when it is more relevant.

Social networks with members that I trust are more valuable than adverts. In fact, a friend’s recommendation with a rich content ad, delivered dynamically, is hard to beat.

Think of it as Google Adsense, but with rich, beautiful content plus a transaction widget or online access to customer service of a company that I’d like to do business with.

Trusted friends recommendations + aesthetics + ease of use and call to action. This is something we have talked about since the advent of internet but yet have failed to deliver. It’s all happening now and it’s called Flipboard. No, really, it is…

Twitter feeds will be the main source of information for the Flipboard and will eventually kill all online communities.

When it comes to twitter we have seen nothing yet. Think about it as a puzzle. All the gazillions of 140 character messages out there are simply pieces of info floating around waiting for some context, waiting for a home.

The more info that’s produced and the more people aggregating this content the better and the more perfect the puzzle will become.

We have gotten used to social networks living in silos, even though this is changing. But the walls still exist between the networks and transaction.

So when we go to our online community we come to talk and sometimes to listen but never to buy. Flipboard changes that.

Merchandising is all about context and packaging. At Disneyworld you cannot exit any ride without going into a souvenir shop filled with relevant products.

Even I bought a vintage Michael Jackson T shirt after a revisit to Captain EO this summer.

Say you are a hotel buff, like me. I love five-star places that make me feel like I’m stepping into another world, in another time.

For me the destination is secondary (well, it’s an expensive hobby). I can’t trust Tripadvisor and I can’t use any ordinary commercial hotel websites.

Instead I use travel mags and do a lot of online research. This takes time.

If I can create a separate Flipboard for the trusted hotel buffs that I follow, and have beautiful rich content ads integrated from the likes of Villa Galici, I think my resistance to use this ad would be very low.

And, furthermore, the more information I get from different social networks and Twitter feeds into my Flipboard, then the more useful it becomes.

To use an anology. We are now looking at the possibility where Flipboard will throw the first global virtual Tupperware party, lasting 24 hours a day 365 days a year.

We are very happy to bring our plastics as long because of who we trust, especially when are buying into something bigger than just ourselves. We can´t stand to be left behind.

In short: mixing trust with aspiration makes for a very powerful combination. And that is why Flipboard is a game-changer.

Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?

Over a backpacking career spanning close to seven years Kevin Lippy had been directly responsible for… not much really, and was more than content with simply being well-traveled. That was until one day when his promising backpacking days came crashing down in one foul swoop when he ran out of money and had no other choice but to go home!

He had officially become a “brokepacker”. Kevin simply knew that he had to do more to help save other backpackers from suffering the same fate as he did.

So he founded Brokepacker, a website purely dedicated to offering the greatest discounts and deals on backpacker accommodation, travel and transport.

A short time later, fellow Brokepacker Dean Ginsberg who has experience in digital marketing, business development, strategy and design, returned home in dire need of a job to repay his backpacking debts.

As Brokepackers, Kevin and Dean both truly understand how much backpackers value discounts, because every single dollar saved is a dollar that can contribute to another experience, another adventure and ultimately another day.

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

We are self-financed. We just tell people that our staple diet of noodles and tomato sauce is part of our strategy to delve into the mindset and psyche of our backpacker target audience.

What problem are you trying to solve?

For backpackers we live by our company motto: Saving You From Home.

For operators:

Having to contend with seasonal demand and volatile fluctuations in backpacker numbers, the majority of operators in the backpacking industry have some unused capacity (distressed stock) during most months of the year.

Brokepacker allows these operators to offload a limited amount of their unutilized inventory at a discounted rate.

Another issue is that the backpacking industry is made up of thousands of small independent operators, the majority of which do not have the brand awareness or marketing budgets to promote themselves on any other points besides price.

Brokepacker serves as more than just a booking engine for these operators as it essentially provides an affordable marketing solution where they can inexpensively differentiate the products and services they offer.

Describe the business, core products and services?

Brokepacker utilises its own purpose built pricing model (Innovation Patent Application 201000090) to distribute the discounts it offers, which are bundled together into ‘deal sets’ and are available on a first come, first served basis.

The discounts are distributed so that:

• No discounts on Brokepacker are less than 25% off – we believe anything less is not a big enough call to action, especially as we generally sell low ticket items.
• All discounts within a deal set are distributed unevenly to allow for some significant teaser discounts which offer as much as 70% off.

Part of our value proposition is that once all the individual discounts within a deal set are sold out, the product/ service can then be purchased at the market rate.

This can either be booked directly through brokepacker.com or by linking a user to the operators own booking engine where they can offer more detailed information and receive bookings commission free.

Restricting the amount of discounts offered per listing, allows us to offer the most competitive discounts. It also allows us to incentivise those who get in early as opposed to rewarding those who book late (which is the opposite of what a lot of lastminute-style discounting sites do).

The system is built so that operators can autonomously manage their own deal set listings in line with the amount of distressed capacity they have at any given point in time.

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

Price conscious, potential “brokepackers” age 18-30 wanting to prolong their travels in Australia. In this way the Brokepacker concept is market driven as it appeals to the overwhelming majority of backpackers who are typically and unashamedly frugal as they seek to get the most bang for their (limited) buck.

Did you have customers validate your idea?

Its pretty intuitive that besides sex and beer, discounts are the most sought after commodity by backpackers. So was it entirely necessary for me to move into a backpacker hostel a couple of months prior to our launch to validate this notion? Absolutely!

Sure, at first even I thought I was uneccesary, but in hindsight it was probably the greatest business decision I have made to date. So much so that I haven’t exactly moved out yet.

Living in and amongst real backpackers on ground level has provided me with a level of insight and understanding about my target market that far outweighs anything I could have possibly achieved from sitting in an office behind a desktop.

It’s also pretty handy for sales leads and spreading the word of mouth about the project, which is great considering it will take some time to get substantial online traction. At times it does prove to be difficult environment to run a business (so I do go home occasionally).

The most interesting thing I have learned so far is that a significant portion of backpackers are equally appreciative when it comes to “value-adding” as they are with discounting.

In this way we are continually seeking to adapt our strategy to not only offer distressed stock at reduced prices but also to offer value-adding products.

What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?

Brokepacker’s primary source of revenue is commissions earned from deal sets sold. Being that it is free to list on Brokepacker, our model is based on the premise that we only make money once the businesses that list with us make money.

We also promote listings that do not do not utilise our pricing model. These may include operators who want to advertise their own special deals or certain types of operators who simply do not fit our pricing model, an example being backpacker bars.

We also run marketing and social media based campaigns through brokepacker.com on behalf of operators on an ad-hoc basis.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Strengths:

• Brokepacker is first to market as a website purely focused on deals and discounts in the Australian backpacking industry. Our custom built pricing model and unique system design was built with simplicity and automation in mind. Brokepacker’s marketing strategies are more targeted to a younger, more social and web-savvy 18‐30 year old independent backpacker audience. Being on ground level amongst backpackers provides us with a unique edge to directly reach our audience

Weaknesses:

• We are a small team with minimal start up capital. We truly see this as more of a challenge then a weakness as we have to be extremely scrupulous with every single dollar of our marketing spend. We simply cannot afford to be reckless at this stage and need to be creative in our promotional strategy. The good news is that we wholeheartedly believe that it is now easier than ever to reach our audience without requiring a prohibitively massive capital base.

Opportunities:

• At present there is no website in the industry that acts a one-stop-shop for a backpacker’s every need including accommodation, activities, tours and transport. The hostel segment is covered (i.e. Hostelworld, Hostelbookers) but in terms of booking tours, travel packages and car rentals as well, you still need to navigate through numerous individual websites. Brokepacker bridges this gap, by allowing all segments of the backpacking industry to list.

Threats:

• Discounting in the backpacker accommodation sector is a widely debated topic in our industry, and there are a faction of operators who believe that any type of discounting is bad news because it drives down yields and consequently hampers product development and inward investment. We need to disassociate from being irrational discounters and let the market know that we provide a solution for operators to sell there excess capacity as opposed to their entire capacity at a discounted rate.

Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?

Nobody has ever categorically stated that Brokepacker would not be successful; however if someone ever did then the last thing we would do is not listen to them.

We would want to understand exactly why they held this belief and on what specific grounds do they think that the idea is going to fail?

We would then thoroughly assess their point of view and if there is any merit whatsoever in their argument we’d do whatever was necessary to mitigate those reasons. We are never too proud to learn, fairly flexible and constantly adapting our strategy.

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

If in 12 months from now we could walk into any backpacker internet terminal along the east coast of Australia and have a good chance of seeing someone on Brokepacker we will be over the moon.

No doubt this will certainly be a challenge considering how transient our target market is – after all the average backpacker comes to Australia for under two months.

Achieving that amount of market recognition and brand awareness will require the continual engagement of new backpackers through word of mouth referrals.

Another success metric will be defined by the amount of operators we have listed on Brokepacker, as we will only increase this in line with demand.

TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.

Or perhaps if you happen to be in Jerusalem, you might want to check out the Balkan Gypsy Music at the Bible Lands Museum.

Travel-planning website NileGuide introduced international events listings, which enable consumers to plan vacations around festivals, concerts, sporting events and art exhibits — even the Sauna Bathing World Championships in Heinola, Finland — and, in some cases, to get recommendations about the happenings.

NileGuide CEO Josh Steinitz says the events content comes via a new partnership with Frommer’s Unlimited, as well as from existing partners such as Ticketmaster and Wcities, and from NileGuide’s posse of local experts.

Users can access the events listings from multiple place on the site, including an Events tab and from NileGuide’s Events Map.

Searching for events can be done by destination or through filters, including outdoors, kid-friendly, sports, date range or lots of other preferences.

And, as you go shopping for events, you can neatly add them to your trip list for later viewing.

NileGuide enables you to view San Francisco’s “must-see” events, for example, ranging from the San Francisco Marathon to the Kinetic Sculpture Race.

So, if you are visiting San Francisco anyway or you’ve been running 20 miles on Sundays for the last two months in preparation for the marathon, you can find out more about the events on NileGuide.

Many of the events don’t yet have NileGuide Expert Tips or the tips are perfunctory, such as this one for the San Francisco Marathon: “Come for the Marathon, stay, and enjoy the City.”

Steinitz says NileGuide has created something special and “elegant” with the events content because it is integrated with trip-planning features throughout the site.

“It’s an entirely new category that’s not served well today,” Steinitz says, adding that it was one of the most-requested features from NileGuide users.

He adds: “We know there is a large chunk of travelers who plan their trips based around events. Others want to participate in or attend events while they are there.”

NileGuide can monetize the events content through its regular advertising on the site and some of the events are bookable through partner websites, with NileGuide receiving a transaction fee for completed bookings.

Everytrail has around 250 guides available to download from the iPhone and Android app stores featuring information, maps and tours created by an array of writers.

Spearheading the launch of the guides is traditional guidebook publisher Fodor’s, which has penned around ten of the guides, focusing of city tours and information.

Everytrail says one of the important elements of the guides is that they work offline – in other words: without racking up expensive data roaming charges when overseas.

The company admits that the guides area of the business was not a major part of the original strategy but has now become a significant focus given the popularity of the guides, especially by those making them.

Currently, revenue from the sale of each guide ($1.99) is split with the author – after Apple has swiped its 30% iTunes fee.

The value of the angel round was not disclosed but is understood to be a six-figure Euro sum and involves Joobili’s mentor and original seed investor Esther Dyson.

Other members of the investor group alongside Dyson include online media executive Zoltan Kovacs and organisers of the Sziget Festival in Hungary.

Joobili CEO Jared Salter says the investment compliments its first seed round from Dyson and will help the company work toward a Series A round down the line.

The latest injection will be used to “launch a host of new features and boost engagement”, Salter says.

Joobili has attracted plenty of attention of the wider tech startup circuit in Europe over the past 12 months, including being ranked highly during Seedcamp Week 2009 in London.

Much of the site’s traction so far has come from the events and festivals area of destination content, boosted in part by securing partnerships with a string of tourism boards and DMOs eager to promote related products.

The company has also carried out contract work for DMOs looking to develop a social media strategy, including work for Athens which coincided with the economic unrest and riots in the Greek capital.

iQueue is an idea from Marc-Oliver Gern, a freelance digital marketing and user experience strategist who is working for the Yukon Territory in Canada.

The idea is pretty simple:

Attractions and other points of interest in the region have markers placed along existing queues with an estimated time remaining until the visitor gets to the front of the line.

On the signs, visitors are prompted to download the iQueue app to their mobile device.

The app works out where the visitor is waiting and then asks if they would like someone to wait in the queue for them.

If the user wants to take up the service the system tells them how long until their stand-in will arrive.

The iQueuer will also purchase the tickets for the visitor before letting them know that they can come back and enjoy the attraction!

Sounds simple.

The app doesn’t stop there. It will also let the visitor what other attractions or things to see are available in the immediate area, based on the length of the existing queue.

An interesting element of the test in its second phase was to enlist unemployed members of the local community to act as the iQuerers.

At this point visitors were asked to pay for the service. Gern says 89 local people signed up and on average received 38 queue requests from visitors. Most of the participants made around Euro 400 after six weeks and 76 hours worth of queuing.

NB: Pics from Marc-Oliver Gern’s blog.

Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?

Tourist Eye is backed by two young entrepreneurs: Javier Fernández Escribano and Ariel Cámus. We are both electrical and computer science engineers and we have been working together for five years.

We have both studied at Technical University of Madrid. The project behind Tourist Eye started at Illinois Institute of Technology while Javier was studying a masters degree.

He developed the idea and he managed a six people team who successfully built the first alpha version of Tourist Eye for Android devices.

When Javier came back to Madrid in 2009, Ariel decided to join the project after working several years on different companies. We started from scratch based on user feedback, trying to create something really useful for tourists.

We are based in Madrid (Spain) and we are a 4 people team focused on the technical development of the product and the user experience. Gerardo Fernandez and Diego Jimenez joined us at the end of last year.

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

We started the business with our own founds and with family and friends financial backing. We are really surprised with the support we’ve received from our family and friends.

It gave us the opportunity to validate the idea before talking about it with business angels and private investors.

What problem are you trying to solve?

There are many problems when you join travel, information and technology that nobody has solved until now.

Tourist really enjoy having updated information about their destination and they really love to take it into their mobiles phone. However, all this information is spread in the network and accessing it while traveling abroad can be very expensive due to roaming charges.

Tourist Eye is the perfect way to take all this information, images and maps into your mobile phone and access it even if you don’t have Internet while traveling.

Tourist Eye also gives you the opportunity to share what you do while travelling. You can share the places you visit, places you discover, the photographs you’ve taken and you don’t need Internet at any moment.

Everything will be synchronized at your hotel or home when you can connect to the Internet.

Tourist Eye allows you to share all this information through social networks like Facebook or Twitter and it keeps a record of previous trips you’ve done.

Describe the business, core products and services?

Tourist Eye is a web & iPhone & Android travel guide that help tourists to get inspired, plan their trip, share it with their friends, and discover the best places and tours on the go.

We offer mobile apps for iPhone and Android. They work completely offline: info, places, maps, GPS position, and photo and messages sharing.

On our web, tourists will be able to discover new places, plan their trips with friends, ask questions, get suggestions and comment on the trip updates from their friends and family. Tourist Eye works as a collaborative travel guide aiming to be the best open tourism database.

Everything will be synchronized automatically on the mobile, so tourists will be able to get all the information and know what’s around them without any roaming charges. They can take photos and send messages from the mobile to share on real time what they are visiting.

We are planning to open the API as well as some widgets to make our content available to other services and products through a Creative Commons License.

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

We believe in global companies and we think tourism is global by nature. We are working hard to promote our apps to English and Spanish speaking users from all over the world.

While in beta, we tested it with around three hundred users from Europe and United States. We have officially launched Tourist Eye on Europe last week and we are now focused on launching the company in the United States.

Our target users are those tourists with iPhone or Android devices and any other who wants to discover new places to visit and a great tool to plan his trips.

We believe smartphones are an incredible tool for tourists to completely improve their experience, discovering the best local restaurants around them or guiding them through a new city.

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

We have completed two rounds of validation. In summer 2009 we tested the alpha prototype and in spring 2010 we validated the idea on the private beta with more than 300 users.

We are now focused on two main purposes: understanding how our clients use our products and getting important metrics about our business.

With that in hand, it is the moment to talk with investors in order to create a great multidisciplinary team. The market is incredible large but the competition is hard, we need to work quickly if we want to seize the opportunity.

What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?

Since tourists require a lot of services for their trips, there are many opportunities to make money offering different products and services.

Our mobile applications expand even more the business opportunities. We believe our apps are worth paying. However, we think out greatest opportunity is to create a great user community in order to improve the quality of our products.

In the next weeks, we are going to offer premium profiles for business (for example cottage houses, small hotels or restaurants) and a white label application for iPhone and Android for companies that want to give their users an added value product at the same time they earn money through a revenue share model.

Our near future strategy is focused in different advertising and transaction models such as discount coupons, flight and hotel booking, destinations promotion, business listings, etc.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Strengths:

• Young, qualified and passionated team, innocence, low expenses, web-mobile integration, offline mode.

Weaknesses:

• First startup, not having content from all over the world.

Opportunities:

• Global market, impressive smartphone market’s growth, users willing to share experiences.

Threats:

• Big market players, difficulty to retain users, difficulty to reach critical mass.

Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?

We have mainly received critics from people thinking we are too young to start our own company and other who thinks we are playing in a very competitive market. However, these are both factors that make us feel even more excited about running our own company.

We think being young is an opportunity because you don’t have anything to lose and you have a lot to win and learn. About the competence, we really believe nobody is doing it correctly, so the next years are going to be very interesting.

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

Some success metrics for the next 12 months are: reach 200k registered users, close a first investment round with investor(s) who believe(s) in our team and project, close important partnerships with market leaders (flights, hotels, coupons, etc.) and measure different business model metrics.

TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.

STA Travel launched its STA Travelers online travel community in February 2007 but admits this week that the site was quietly closed six months ago.

Citing how other social networks were already doing the sharing elements of the STATravelers site, STA Travel says it wanted to focus on its existing presence in Facebook and Twitter.

The company’s other social platform, STA Travel Blogs, which sits on the main STA Travel site, also allows a lot of the multimedia sharing tools that were built into the STATravelers.

According to freely available web analytics tools, volume of indexed pages and back-links started to take a tumble from the middle of 2009 until the site closed earlier this year.

Nevertheless, STATravelers ranked well for critical key search phrases such as “student travel” and “travel community” but appears to have suffered from simply not being the social network of choice for young and independent travellers, Facebook.

James Bell, commercial vice president for STA Travel, based in the US, says:

“We decided to close statravelers.com earlier this year to focus on our vibrant communities on Twitter, Facebook and blogs.statravel.com. We found that these platforms allowed our customers to share their travel experiences with us in the way they wanted to and statravelers.com was no longer necessary to help people share their trip stories, travel advice and photos.”