Jim Hornthal has been in the travel industry for a long time. He often jokes that the first booking he made in online travel was at Kitty Hawk with the Wright Brothers.

He previously founded Preview Travel which was one of the first companies to sell travel online. Preview ended up going public in 1997 and then merged with Travelocity.com to create the 3rd most popular website at the time (only behind EBay and Amazon).

His current company, Triporati, is perhaps akin to a Pandora of destination discovery, helping consumers discover their perfect vacation destination.

I recently had the opportunity to interview Jim and discussed what advice he would give new entrepreneurs.

He jokingly says that no one ever takes his advice, but he keeps on giving it. If you’re thinking of (or already have) started a company, here are eight tips from Jim Hornthal:

1. The question isn’t can you, but should you?

Just because you can do something does not mean you should. Rather than just figuring out if you are using your money wisely, you also need to ask yourself if this the best use of your time and your talent as well.

2. Just because someone isn’t doing it, doesn’t mean you should.

Make sure that if you are going to throw your time, effort, career, and attention of resources into a project, that you think it can be really great (at least in your opinion, as the innovator and entrepreneur).

3. Socialize your idea to as many people as possible.

With Jim’s latest company, Triporati, he spoke to “dozens and dozens of people”. They went to potential distribution partners, customers, and industry professionals, all before building a prototype.

4. Find people who will be honest with you. Don’t go to friends & family.

Friends and family will never be honest with you. You need to talk with the “hostile elements” of your industry – people who will be brutally honest.

5. Test, test, test – don’t sell.

When you’re out there socializing your idea and seeing what people think, this is not the time to sell. Go in and ask, “why is this the dumbest thing you’ve ever heard?”.

6. Use the lean startup model – prototype, iterate and get a lot of customer development & feedback.

Check out SteveBlank.com and read through his articles. Here are some to get started.

7. When you start building your team, always try to be the dumbest person in the room.

There are people out there that are better than you at everything. Don’t be stubborn or lazy, go out there and find them.

8. Never stop evolving

Constantly challenge your assumptions; the user interface, distribution channels, brand proposition and so on. Your company may look very different six months or a year from now. When you stop evolving, you start dying.

To hear more from Hornthal, you can listen to the entire 30-minute interview:

You can also download the entire MP3 (right-click and then choose “Save link as…”). Or read the transcript.

NB: This is a guest article by Jason Demant, co-founder of Unanchor.com.

The group includes ex-Expedia CEOs Barton and Blachford, former-European boss Breakwell as well as Ignition Partners, Jim Hornthal of Triporati and Rob Glaser, founder of Real Networks.

Hipmunk says the investment round totals $4.2 million, although a recent SEC filing says the total offering amount could eventually reach $5.8 million.

Details of the backers were not release until today. Previous rounds of investment came in the form of Y Combinator and SV Angel.

CEO Adam Goldstein says much of the investment will be concentrated on hiring more engineers and development of the technology behind the widely talked about metasearch service [see TLabs Showcase - Hipmunk].

The site has attracted praise mostly for its unique flight search interface, but Hipmunk co-founder Steve Huffman’s former life as one of the folk behind social bookmarking service Reddit ensured the site attracted the attention of the tech media in Silicon Valley more than you’re average new travel website.

Launched initially using the Orbitz flights affiliate service, Hipmunk secured a deal with ITA Software in November to use the QPX system for airfare shopping and pricing.

This is to incorporate inspiration, recommendation and discovery into the online consumer experience as much as transactions.

After 15 years of online travel being about online transactions, we are moving from answering closed questions (“How much for a ticket to New York?”) to answering open ones (“Where should I go next?”).

For consumers to get an answer to an open-ended question it will be necessary for them to use a booking or query widget that does not require the customer to know where they are going.

To start the online travel process from a search box based around something other than selecting a date and destination (the traditional online travel agent starting point).

In the last year I have met a number of startups and mature companies building, launching and promoting travel sites exploring this area. And through this I have spotted four approaches to non-destination base search.

1. Drag, click, build and recommend from as many sites as you like

The use of plug-ins or apps to build up a trip idea, notion, inspiration and plan without actually having an engine at all.  By just dragging ideas from a site to a planning product.

Add links, add comments, add thoughts, share with others and build up from a broad notion to a detailed plan.

Gliider is very active in this space. They have a tool for collecting, collating and sharing travel plans using a plug-in that follows you while you surf.  It has taken search off one site and allowed all sites to be used in one experience.

2. Multi-click criteria selection

Using something other than a destination but still requiring a click and selection.  Instead of clicking on a destination these sites are getting consumers to start the inspiration or shopping experience using different criteria like:

• Date – Joobili wants a date first, eses the time period you want to travel in as the starting point for trip inspiration (Joobili founder interview);
• Experience ranking/rating – Asking consumers to rank in some sort of order a traveller’s holiday activity preferences. Triporati wants consumers to start with a stack ranking of up to 64 interests.  Tripbase is trying a different angle with a slider on five variables.
• Price – the ability to search based on budget first is being talked about but we have not see it. Planetism (Alpha presenter at the PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit in 2009) is still just a static page. Cost4travel has launched and I am expecting more sites to emerge in this area.
• Images – Hotels.com have been trialling their hotel visualiser were search starts with pictures and images (Alex Bainbridge has some detail).

3. Organisation and history first

Instead of starting with a search box, in this category sites start with the bookings already made by travellers.

Providing travellers a service for collating and storing all the bookings made on various sites. Currently this is being used to provide a travel management service and social networking space.

In time, this will expand to a recommendation service as players in this space collect more and more historical information about traveller behaviour – opening up a powerful data mining and merchandising resource.

TripIt is the first in this space and a tool I used with every trip (product review). A place to store and share all travel information with tracking and sharing tools.

Traxo has entered this space focused more in the leisure sector by building login in links to the major OTA customer information screens.

Allowing them to access a traveller’s account details directly from the OTA. Nokia’s Dopplr is coming from a more networking and “where are my contacts” approach but they too are collecting historical information about a traveller’s habits and desires. Tripcase scored a lucky break in this tight start-up battle when they made their way into iPhone app advertising.

While none of these sites are aggressively moving into the recommendation space – it is only a matter of time before they use the collected data for directing consumers to purchase paths.

4. No search – just a push

The latest version of non-date or non-destinational search sites are those with no search at all.  Sites with no mechanism for conducting any form of search of investigation.  Just a limited list of deals targeted at a select user group.

Playing on the strength of the user base and the ability of the company to select the right deals for the user base.

Biggest example is the Gilt-backed Jetsetter (interview with CEO). Start-ups are emerging regularly in this are. I have an example even closer to (my) home when some ex-Orbitz staff recently launched BonVoyou.

It is far too soon to call the death of the date and destination based search interface but there is a lot of venture money and start-up energy being spent on finding a new way to search for travel results.

This entrepreneurial push is evidence of the emerging desire from consumers for exploring new ways of exploring different areas of the inspiration, research and purchase funnels.

I predict we will see this start to change the UI, design and flow of the OTAs as they seek to chase this consumer desire and fight off the start up response.

Any other search approaches or companies you have noticed that are trying non-destinational search?

Hollywood is having a do-over decade. The rewrite, reboot and redo seems to be the safest bet for a production company.

Planet of the Apes, Friday the 13th, Halloween, Clash of the Titans, The Crazies, The Omen, Amityville Horror etc, the list of movie do overs in the last ten years is endless.

In online travel too it has been a period of comebacks and do overs, where execs from the booms of the nineties and early naughties are running new business in online travel.

Here are a seven of the higher profile online travel reboots (in no particular order).

Triporati

• A discovery and inspiration engine built by online travel “founding parents” Jim Hornthal (chairman) and Sharlene Wang (chief product officer). Hornthal and Wang sold Preview Travel to Travelocity in March 2000 – arguably the first major online travel corporate transaction. Through Triporati they are trying to reboot the travel inspiration process with a combination of editorial smarts, travel genomics and customer data collection.

NB: Interview with Hornthal.

Tripit

• In September 2003 Gregg Brockway sold Hotwire to Expedia – adding opaque inventory for Expedia to combine with Travelscape + Hotels.com/HRN hotel selling machine. He’s rebooting with a Sabre, Azure Capital Partners and O’Reilly AlphaTech backed travel organisation and networking tool Tripit.com. They just raised another $7million – making $13.1 million in total.  I am a Tripit fan. I do more than 250,000 km a year in travel and Tripit makes it easier. I find more value in the travel organisational side of the product than the networking and community side but that does not amount to a negative.  They are also nice people – having forgiven me for screwing up a timezone and breaking a press release embargo.

NB: Product review.

NewTravelCo

• The band is back to together. As reported, ex-Expedia biggies Rich Barton (former CEO), Simon Breakwell (former Euro boss) Greg Slyngstad (former hotel and packaging boss) and Sunil Shah (former VP Engineering) are rebooting with a mysterious new travel product (aptly named NewTravelCo) and a cool $9.8 million in funds. We don’t know what they have planned for NTC.  They are not saying. I heard a rumour that they are looking to build a TripAdvisor killer – focusing on content, information and discovery rather than booking – but we will just have to wait and see.

NB: Interview with Breakwell.

Getaroom

• Selling HRN/Hotels.com to Expedia made Robert Diener and Dave Litman rich and online travel famous. Pioneers of booking hotels via a computer, Diener and Litman are trying to re-book the way hotel bookings are made over the phone. I am not convinced the model will work for this reboot but betting against Diener and Litman is hard to do.

NB: Company critique.

Voyij

• Kayak bought Sidestep in 2007, consolidating metasearch 1 and 2 and confirming that first mover advantage is not a guarantee of success. Former Sidesteppers Brent Stewart (co-founder), Nick Atkins (software architect) and UI engineer Paul Ki announced an attempt to reboot the metasearch space with the launch of Voyij (pronounced “voyage”) in May 2009.  Coming back for a direct challenge to their former competitor then owner now competitor again.

Hotelscombined

• HotelClub was bought by Cendant in April 2004 and is now part of Orbitz Worldwide. In 2006 former HotelClub search and technology leads Yury Shar and Michael Doubinski rebooted with the launch of hotel metasearch engine Hotelscombined.  While Hotelscombined continue to operate below the radar – well below compared to Kayak – Shar claimed last week that they company was now a serious player generating six million visitors a month.

NB: Post regarding a presentation from Shar at TRAVEltech in 2008 and first impressions of Hotelscombined in 2007.

Disclosure: I work for HotelClub.

Wego

• Craig Hewett (now chief marketing officer and co-founder of Wego) launched IHG into the online world in the mid naughties. Martin Symes (CEO of Wego) was one of the first of Zuji’s employees in Asia. They rebootted in form of the launch and growth of Asian based metasearch company Wego.com. Initially called Bezurk, Wego has grown through high profile affiliate deals and an investment from the Australian arm of News Corp. The market is much less open and more competitive for Wego that it was when they first launched in 2005 but they have a good product and deep experience in the market.

NB: Zuji is now a wholly owned Travelocity brand in Asia. But at the time it was part-owned by Travelocity and part-owned by major Asian carriers.

More?

Any other high profile reboots you can think of?

Perhaps the perfect end to this post is by predicting which of these reboots will be the Star Trek (ie successful) and which will be the horror of Land of the Lost.

Who do you think  be due a Razzie award and who will be up for a Tnooz Oscar in 2011/12?

Editor’s note: There are no current plans for Tnooz Oscars.