It’s been a tough couple of years for websites dedicated to travel planning, save for TripIt, which was snapped up earlier this year for a cool $120 million. But lately there seem to be encouraging signs in the arena, particularly from two similar companies: Wanderfly and TravelMuse.

Wanderfly actually is celebrating its first anniversary today, and has released a one-minute video showcasing 500 travelers going to 500 places from photos uploaded to the company’s website by users during the past year. The company also shared some impressive statistics.

According to Christy Liu, one of Wanderfly’s founders, and a handy “Year of Inspiration” graphic, the site has:

• inspired four million trips with users from 217 countries;
• earned a Webby nomination, was named a Top 10 NYC Startup by Time Inc., and made the Top 100 Brilliant Companies by Entrepreneur magazine;
• launched its “Also Recommended” widget on 1,000 New York Times travel pages; and
• seen traffic increase 40 percent the past month.

The site aims to help visitors find inspiring destinations with information culled from 19 different travel partners and a tool where users plug in variables, such as budget, location, length of stay and desired activities, and receive destination recommendations that match the entered parameters.

TravelMuse, which launched in 2008 and helps travelers share itineraries and find destination ideas with a nearly identical inspiration tool as Wanderfly—yes, there are some differences, but this post isn’t a comparison of the sites—has shown signs of resurrection lately. After being purchased by the Travel Ad Network last November, then lying low the past 12 months, the company started Tweeting regularly again and adding posts to its Facebook page and its blog, TravelMusings, about three weeks ago.

Since then, traffic appears to be on the rise for the company, with a 23 percent jump logged for September on Compete.com. (Admittedly, Compete gives an estimate that isn’t always up-to-date for non-pro users, but it’s nice to see a rebound, nonetheless.) In addition, MakeUseOf.com, which writes about “cool websites, computer tips and downloads that make you more productive,” recommended TravelMuse today as a site that makes trip planning easier.

Sure, anniversaries are fun to celebrate, and revived content and traffic increases are positive signs, but whether these indicators of growth will be ongoing remains to be seen. Wanderfly announced it is working on a 2.0 version of the site, due out the first quarter of 2012. No news yet on what new features TravelMuse may have in store for the near future, but here’s hoping both companies (along with other related sites) continue to grow in the coming year. An increasing number of users interested in online travel planning is a good bet for the travel industry overall.

Photo: Wanderfly

(Editor’s Note: For full disclosure, as mentioned in previous posts where I have written about TravelMuse, I am a former employee of the company but have not had a direct relationship with the site since 2009.)

Related posts:
Wanderfly Unveils 25 ‘New’ Destinations and Other April 1 Fun
TripIt’s Sale: Time to Reward Travel Planning Sites or Narrow the Field?
TravelMuse Rolls Out New Travel Planner

Avis Rent A Car this week became the first car-rental company to integrate TripIt’s technology into its website, www.avis.com. The move allows users who link their TripIt and Avis accounts to easily book car rentals without having to enter their travel details.

The new Avis service uses itinerary-management company TripIt’s open-technology platform to extract trip details, such as flight and hotel reservations, from TripIt itineraries to automatically populate the corresponding fields on www.avis.com.

“The vast majority of people typically make airline and hotel reservations first, before they reserve a rental car,” said Tom Gartland, president, North America, for Avis Budget Group, parent company of Avis. “This partnership will help travelers who have completed their air and hotel arrangements and provide them with an even faster way to add an Avis rental to their trip. TripIt members will benefit from not having to remember travel dates, times or flight information, and having their rental car arrangements directly connected with their other travel plans.”

Likewise, when TripIt users book Avis rentals through the linked service, the information will automatically be added to their itineraries on TripIt. The service is free of charge. Users can links their accounts at www.avis.com/tripitservice.

In addition, to celebrate the new partnership, TripIt is offering a Supercharge Your Itinerary sweepstakes. Users who connect their Avis and TripIt accounts are automatically entered. One grand-prize winner will receive 14 free days of an Avis rental (seven days of an Avis Cool Car and seven days of an Avis Premium Car) and a free year of TripIt Pro. Five runner-up winners will receive seven free days of an Avis Premium Car rental and a free year of TripIt Pro. Visit www.tripit.com/promotions/avissweepstakes for more information.

Photo: TripIt

Related posts:
TripIt’s Sale: Time to Reward Travel Planning Sites or Narrow the Field?
Avis Budget Group Announces Fees for No-Show Rentals
TripIt Receives $7M in Series C

Kudos to CEO Gregg Brockway and the other folks at TripIt, that handy online travel tool that makes keeping track of travel a less formidable task. It’s satisfying to see a smart, well-executed site succeed, especially to the tune of up to $120 million.

As I followed the excitement pouring forth online yesterday about the deal, I couldn’t help but think: Is it time for travel start-ups launched four or five years ago to finally achieve success after being waylaid by the recession and continuing economic malaise, or are we simply in the consolidation and elimination phase?

When I started my previous position as editorial director at TravelMuse in 2007, online travel planning, research and organizing was the new frontier, a vast landscape just waiting for the right concepts, engineers and venture capital to come along. And come they did.

Around the time TripIt, TravelMuse and UpTake launched, the space quickly grew to also include NileGuide, GoPlanit, RealTravel, Tripbase, TripWolf, TripHub, TripWiser, Triporati, Tripology, OpenTravel, WholeTravel … you get the picture. I’m sure I’m leaving out a dozen other quasi-competitors (some who even partnered) from that era, if not more.

At least one didn’t make it past 2008; a few sites still seemingly active have declining traffic and lack noticeable updates. On a positive note, Rand McNally acquired Tripology in late 2009, UpTake—arguably the traffic leader—purchased RealTravel in November, while TravelMuse became part of the Travel Ad Network, and all are still up and running.

These three acquisitions didn’t involve nearly the same kind of wow money that TripIt attracted, but they were exciting in the sense that companies were partnering to better utilize resources and focus on their combined strengths.

But back to my question: Where’s the space headed for everyone else?

New and improved competitors are entering the market (WanderFly, for one), and with travel making a comeback this year—led by the return of business travel—owners of early trip-planning sites likely hope to register growth and make up for the recent lag years.

Could they get left behind, though, because of unlucky timing? Just as travel is making a recovery, the buzz is around mobile and apps and how that’s where it’s at for new content research and organization of travel plans.

But many first-generation trip-planning sites have tight budgets, and the field is still crowded. Is there enough investment money left to improve current products and create new app tools for these sites to distinguish themselves, as TripIt did, and survive? Or is it too late for some of these early players? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Los Altos, CA based TravelMuse (www.travelmuse.com) today unveiled a new travel planner and Trip Widget, along with a contest which offers TravelMuse users a chance to win a free luxury vacation in Hawaii.

TravelMuse

Russ Lemelin, CEO of TravelMuse, said that the new TravelMuse Planner “makes the chaos of travel planning easy and fun by providing a central place to save, organize and share all your travel research for any destination.”

After giving all the new TravelMuse tools a once-over, I have to say that what Russ Lemelin claims is pretty much accurate.

Create Trip:- Type in the destination name and click the create button. You now have a trip folder where all your research from both within and outside of TravelMuse will be available.

Bookmarker:- Get the new TravelMuse Bookmarker, and you now have the ability to save pages, photos and text from any website into aforementioned trip folder. 

Organizing, Schedules & Map:- When you’re browsing through a ton of links and pages, the TravelMuse Planner makes it easy by helping you tag and sort everything into categories and schedules (Day 1, Day 2, etc.).

You can see the result of all your research on an interactive map, and get more recommendations for popular items – attractions, hotels, shops, restaurants - based on what you already have.

Collaboration & Sharing:- If you want to show off your trip plan or need advice, you can invite people over to view or edit your masterpiece. Ask for advice on facebook, and comments made by your friends will automatically end up saved in your trip folder. Use the TravelMuse Trip Widget to display the trip plan on your site, blog or on your social networking pages.

All of this – the destination guides, the trip folder, bookmarker and the widget are useful enough. But what makes the whole thing likeable, or as Russ Lemelin says “makes the chaos of travel planning easy and fun” is that the user experience is positive.

- Pages and tools load fast, and its easy to use. Just click on what you see and like, and you’ll end up with a planned trip.
- Ads are discreet, with no bells & whistles to interrupt or divert you from trip planning.
- Pages from outside not only get saved, but the tools also recognize the page and translate it into a physical address, so you can see all your selections on the map.
- Your research at every stage is safe. It won’t vanish if you accidently click something or close the window.

Free trip to Hawaii:- TravelMuse has partnered with the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau (HVCB) to give away a luxury trip for two to Oahu through the “Create a Trip on TravelMuse, Win Your Perfect Moment in Hawaii” sweepstakes.

Winner gets round-trip airfare for 2 to Honolulu, a 5-night stay at the Hilton Hawaiian Village and free admission to four hot attractions in Hawaii. All you need to do is register on TravelMuse and create a trip. More details here.