There’s a tremendously funny (and bloody) scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail in which King Arthur wishes to cross a bridge and is confronted by the belligerent Black Knight. King Arthur politely requests passage but the angry and painfully stubborn Black Knight is unrelenting. After formal negotiations break down the Knight is rendered limbless in an incredibly lopsided fight. The knight remains antagonistic to the bitter end and as King Arthur leaves he exclaims chivalrously, “Alright, we’ll call it a draw!”

Wharton recently published an excellent article (PDF file) on the ongoing debate around the merits of user-generated content (UGC) versus professional content. The article describes a pendulum of public opinion which has swung back and forth over the last few years. Turns out the pendulum is starting to settle somewhere in the middle and it’s not an either/or discussion at all. Consumers want both. Alright, let’s call it a draw!

“A hybrid approach (is) emerging that embraces both professional and amateur content. Professional content on the Web often has a user-generated component to it, whether it’s a complementary blog or a user discussion forum.”

The travel sector is a great litmus test for this hybrid approach. Today’s online travel universe contains both professional and UGC, but much of it is fragmented. On one side you find editorially-vetted destination guides, articles and news. On the other—millions of user reviews, videos, blogs, forums, groups and journals.

Our approach at TravelMuse is to begin with a foundation of articles and guide data written by experts and journalists. This fact-checked content enables our users to immediately begin planning trips. Readers can then augment this content with comments, ratings, or join the discussion on the TravelMuse blog. The goal is to harmonize the two worlds to provide more relevancy to visitors.

But unlike the Black Knight, we don’t want stubbornness to cloud our thinking and we’re open to new insights and suggestions on how to best unite these worlds. As always, we look forward to hearing from you.

For the majority of people in the United States, the process of online travel booking is a pretty familiar experience by now. It’s probably right up there with buying books on Amazon or searching for information via Google.

It turns out that online travel is in fact the most mature and largest single e-commerce category. More than $90,000,000,000 (that’s 90 billion dollars) in travel transactions are done online every year—in the United States alone. And the market is still growing—with growth greater than 50 percent (year over year) seen in emerging dominant economies like China, India, and Brazil.

So if online travel has become commonplace, and Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity and Priceline have become household names, why is there such a boom in travel start-ups right now? What problems are they trying to solve? How do they hope to compete?

Look no further than TripAdvisor, the newest household name on the block. TripAdvisor recognized a great opportunity and filled a huge void that was unmet by the large online travel agencies — people want hotel reviews from real people.  Is it really surprising that people are nearly twice as likely to trust user reviews than what the hotel says about their rooms?  (TripAdvisor now has 10 million reviews and has become such a hot phenomenon, that some hotels have taken to posting favorable reviews of themselves; so make sure you read between the lines.)

So this current groundswell in travel start-ups (which some have dubbed travel 2.0) is a direct response to the identification of a whole host of other niches and voids that have yet to be filled in the space. And the acceleration of innovation over the last 12-18 months is largely attributable to the decreasing cost of technology and simply a function of the Web itself. Data is everywhere (but useful information is scarce), software frameworks have gotten inexpensive and it doesn’t take as much money or as many people to kick-start a new venture. That said, I have a sense that we are seeing a bit of a travel 2.0 bubble with something of a “build it and they will come” philosophy.

As one of the new entrants in this space, we’re trying torestrain ourselves and stay focused—building a great travel planning product and authoring interesting and helpful content. Here are the key issues we see and are focused on:

• Booking is the last 5 percent of the online travel process. The 95 percent that comes before it is where all the heavy lifting happens. What people want is help in getting ideas of where to travel and what to do. Hence, our investment in editorial content that is vetted, fact-checked and written by local experts and journalists.

• Not everyone who visits your Web site wants the same thing. Relevancy is essential and we’re focusing on family travelers first. We want to make sure that if you’re a family traveler, our insight and information is helpful to you.

• Planning a trip online can be taxing. We think it should be fun and easy. That’s why we’re so jazzed about the TravelMuse Planner which is currently in private beta, but will be broadly available this summer.

While these are the key issues that we’re focused on, there are many more opportunities out there. We’re excited to see what some of our peers are up to like the guys at UpTake who are making it simple to quickly search thousands of content sites to find information relevant to families.

Travel is a space that is constantly re-defining itself and there are many unmet needs still to be addressed.  I agree with Yen Lee at Uptake, that online travel is nowhere near “done”.

What do you think the big opportunities are? Or for that matter, the nagging little splinters that should get fixed?

We want to hear from you.

Thanks for all the great feedback that we received during our Alpha user test phase. The comments and suggestions have been mostly positive, especially about the look and feel of the site. Special thanks go to our super Alpha tester, Jen Marquardt, who provided several pages of detailed feedback!

Some of your suggestions have been incorporated in the latest release, including some changes to the homepage, enhanced product messaging, improving the hotel search function, and building a company blog and photo blog. Many other suggestions have been added to our product roadmap and will be addressed over time.

Please keep the feedback coming so we can build a better site for you. In closing, I leave you with a few quotes about TravelMuse:

“I really like most of the website and the navigation. It’s beautiful and interesting!” —TravelMuse member

“I love the concept and I think it fills a definite void in the travel research space.”—A finance manager at eBay

“This looks awesome—I am ALWAYS searching online for great family destinations and come up with the same boring lists—then occasionally there will be a great magazine article and I will find a new place that way so this site is a great resource.”—A new mom in New York

As the co-founders of the company, we’re elated to welcome you to the “almost beta” version of TravelMuse! This has been a labor of love from day one. How many people get to combine a passion for both travel and new products and call it work? We founded TravelMuse in April 2007 in response to a growing frustration with the sameness of travel content we found on the Web and the time and effort it took to plan a trip online.

Once we realized it wasn’t just us, but rather lots of people who were getting chaffed by having to visit dozens of sites before booking a trip and were growing weary of being served the same regurgitated content, we quit our comfy corporate gigs and started TravelMuse. Over the last 12 months, we’ve been fortunate to assemble a terrific team of 11 people that shares our passion for building great products—and who of course love to travel. Beyond that common DNA, we’re a diverse bunch—with media, travel, software and publishing backgrounds, and we hail from six different countries:

• Canada,
• Ivory Coast,
• France,
• Scotland,
• China and the
• United States.

This rich mosaic of experiences is something we cherish and, we think, will help us to stay on the cutting edge. In January of this year, we rolled out the first version of the site showcasing vibrant photography, rich destination guides and original travel articles written by more than 50 seasoned journalists and local experts.  We were humbled to get positive and a lot of constructive feedback from our alpha users.  Today we released the TravelMuse Planner to a select group of about 200 alpha users. The Planner allows you to quickly organize and securely share a trip plan with friends and family. The Planner will be open to everyone beginning this summer.

To wrap up this opening post, our ultimate goal is to provide an online travel planning experience that is fun, relevant and a significant improvement over what you find on the Web today. Input and feedback are essential to make this happen. Our sincerest thanks to our alpha users for their insights over the last few months.

To new visitors: please share your thoughts—praise and pans are extremely welcome.

Thanks!

Kevin & Eric