Travel Industry

The folks over at Travelmuse are heralding the unveiling of the latest release of the TravelMuse Planner. The new Planner is reportedly a huge improvement over the previous one, and is now the ‘most advanced yet intuitive trip planning solution on the Web.’

Travelmuse

I’m having visions of ‘The Planner’ becoming self-aware and going around waking people in the night and forcing them to start planning for a trip.

You think that’s a joke? Go to the TravelMuse homepage (www.travelmuse.com/), just type in a destination and give it a test-run.

You’ll end up hooked, and doing travel research for a trip you didn’t know you wanted to take. That’s because the new Travelmuse Planner makes the whole thing seem like a  breeze – it’s a lot easier to find and save content you like, both on Travelmuse and from elsewhere on the web.

Travelmuse Tripfolio

That, in turn, is because of the new features that have been implemented, like the Tripfolio that follows you around and dutifully saves and lists all the pages that interest you. Another new useful tool that is now available on Travelmuse is the embedded search facility.

Somebody at Travelmuse probably came to the conclusion (and rightly so) that no matter how great your website is and even if you offer everything that they want, travelers will always want to check out some more sites. With embedded search, Travelmuse is allowing that impluse free rein, but without losing the visitor to other sites.

With this feature, you can save web pages from outside directly to the trip plan without leaving TravelMuse. Saves you the trouble of keeping multiple windows open and bookmarking tons of pages.

Travelmuse embedded search

And by storing it all at Travelmuse, no matter what kind of page it is - a hotel review, article, or a blog post, you get to see the big picture when you want to start making sense of the gazzilion pages you just went through.

And they’re also refocusing their content to enhance it’s value to the trip planning process. In a blog post, Travelmuse CEO Kevin Fliess says that from now on, “you’ll see fewer general articles and more bite-sized pearls of wisdom specifically designed to make your trip planning experience better.”

In the next few months, Travelmuse is also planning to add destination ratings, recommended trips and descriptions of things to do at destinations.

I could afford a Mexican beach vacation. For one.

In my other life (well, one of them) I’m a frugal blogger, so I am all about the power of budgeting and saving for the good things in life. I love to travel but with two kids and a third on the way there is not much extra money kicking around for trips.

So I was intrigued by TravelMuse’s new Yaycations calculator, which promises to help “discover the vacation budget you never knew you had,” by helping you save money on other stuff. Then the site inspires you to follow through by showing you actual vacation packages you could purchase with your planned savings.

The calculator walks you through common spending categories and asks you to select certain things to sacrifice. For instance, you can choose to sacrifice one $3.50 latte a week and earmark the saved $182 for your vacation budget, then forgo one restaurant lunch a week to sock away an additional $364 to $2500.

Once you’ve worked your way through the 20 spending categories, Yaycations helps you figure out what kind of vacation you could buy with what you hope to save. Promise to give up a lot of expensive restaurant meals, and TravelMuse has you in Kauai; only give up a few lattes and it will suggest something more local.

I tried the Yaycations calculator to try to find vacation money for my own family, but unfortunately our budget is already so close to the bone that there is little I’m willing to give up. I love cafe lattes but rarely buy them (in fact I am thinking of cashing in my SwagBucks from an online promotion for StarBucks cards just to give myself the occasional treat). I don’t currently have a gym membership, and I don’t have cable. I get most of my beauty and personal care supplies for free by using coupons and working the rewards system at CVS.

I did manage to find a couple things to give up: taking my kids out to lunch once a week (estimated cost of $7), a monthly DVD rental ($4), one tech toy per year ($200), 1 pair Payless shoes ($25), 1 beer per week for my husband to give up ($5).

Those hypothetical sacrifices gave me $897 for a vacation. Then Yaycations showed me where I could go for that. Actually, it gave me a range of choices including Carmel and San Jose del Cabo, Mexico. The only problem is that I was talking about our whole household budget, and the choices it gave me were under $897 PER PERSON.

So I guess by making a few sacrifices, I could take myself on vacation and leave the husband and kids at home. Which actually doesn’t sound too bad.

I think TravelMuse’s new tool is a fun way to get you into the mindset for budgeting for a vacation, and would work great for folks who have room in their budgets for discretionary spending. Of course, YOU’RE the one who has to follow through with going out for lunch one less time each week or skipping your monthly mani/pedi.

Photo by Carrie Kirby.

Video created by Elliott Ng.
During the next few months, UpTake will be presenting short takes with travel industry leaders, influencers and innovators. Our first video interview is with Kevin Fliess, CEO of TravelMuse. Kevin’s background is well suited to launching an online travel sites:

“His work and family life have taken him all over the world: from Tahiti to India and Canada to Mexico; Amsterdam to Turkey and the northern California coast to South Carolina islands. Prior to starting TravelMuse, Kevin spent 15 years as a leader in various high tech companies, most recently as VP of product marketing and product management for emerging solutions at SAP. He’s also held strategic positions at Synopsys, Icarian and Siemens. A serial innovator, Kevin co-invented the first composite application at SAP and has one patent granted with seven applications on file.”

We hope you enjoy his positive take on where the opportunities exist for online travel in this turbulent economy:

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Kevin Fliess, Co-founder and CEO of TravelMuse

During the conference, I am asking the Innovation Summit participants a few brief questions. My first interview was with Kevin Fliess, co-founder and CEO of TravelMuse:

Who are your target customers?
Our market is the complex leisure travel planning market; including families, which TravelMuse considers under served and the 55 plus market with time and complex trip planning needs.

How is TravelMuse different or better?
Our “Inspiration Finder” helps you find where to go based on rational and emotional needs.  Our open platform allows people to save information from anywhere using the TravelMuse trip planner tool.

How are you preparing for this new economic downturn?
From a business perspective, TravelMuse is running a very lean operation to weather the current “perfect storm.” From a budget conscious customer perspective, they can find their preferred destination our site and then find bookable options that fall within their budget.

What is the biggest insight or surprise you gleaned from the conference?
At this conference, three years ago, people said, “travel is done.”  These presentations prove that travel is far from done.

What is your customer acquisition strategy?
Our original content allows us to be found via organic search and via viral sharing through our planner.