Hate flying? Google Earth could keep you visiting attractions anyway for the next, oh, rest of your life or so, thanks to 100,000-plus new tours it just added across sites and cities in over 200 countries. That’s on top of the 11,000 tours that came …
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Hipmunk’s CEO And Founder Adam Goldstein Discusses Its New Deals Product And The Road Ahead
Having launched two years ago into an extremely crowded travel vertical, Hipmunk has carved out its own niche. The site was built out of the need for ease of travelling by its founders, and the company has done a lot of things right since then. Hipmunk has raised $20.2 million to date, and has recently launched a new Deals product, which allows people to find the best places to go based on the best price available. For people who just want to go somewhere, and nowhere specifically, Hipmunk can help you find a cheap ticket to a random place. For example, if you’re looking to “get away” this weekend, Hipmunk could find you a super cheap plane ticket from San Francisco to Vegas in a snap. Hipmunk’s CEO and founder Adam Goldstein stopped by our studios to discuss the new product and to update us on what’s still ahead for the company. The company started out small, but it currently has 32 people now and is looking for more engineers. You probably get to travel a lot…you know, to “test things out.”
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With 40% Of Its 2.5M Users Now Logging In Via Mobile, Gogobot Finally Brings Its Social Travel Experience To Android
Since launching in 2010, social travel startup Gogobot has been trying to play a role in legitimizing online travel discovery, fighting the shoddy design and link farm leanings that reined in the space. Focusing on collecting and curating quality, user-generated photos and reviews for travel destinations all over the world, Gogobot set out to create the new, digital Lonely Planet — a trusted mobile and web resource for trusted travel advice from experts and friends.
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Wikimedia Launches Its Crowdsourced Wikivoyage Online Travel Guide
The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit parent organization of Wikipedia, just officially launched its twelfth official project: Wikivoyage. The new site, which was already in beta for a while and has a bit of a tumultuous history, is a free online travel guide that, just like Wikipedia, is edited collaboratively. It currently features about 50,000 articles and has attracted a core group of about 200 volunteer editors. The site is available in English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Russian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish.
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Travelocity Takes A Page From Airbnb’s Book And Launches Concierge Service
Facing stronger competition from disruptive travel startups like Airbnb and the behemoth of Priceline/Kayak/Booking.com, Sabre-owned Travelocity is looking to up its game with extras. Today the company announced that it would launch a new concierge service, offering restaurant reservations, driving directions, tickets to local events and more. The service, it says, is free for users who book flight-plus-hotel packages through the site.
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Facebook + Kayak: Flights With Friends Launches To Take The Pain Out Of Group Travel Planning
Over the last few years, the travel industry has begun to undergo significant change, as startups and incumbents have fought to bring the disparate parts of a highly regulated industry online. Much of the attention from consumer web businesses has focused on making travel more “social,” improving discovery and helping travelers figure out what to do at destinations of choice. Today, there’s a laundry list of options when it comes to finding information about travel destinations, and sites like TripIt and Kayak (now part of Priceline) have changed the way we search for and book travel — for business and pleasure.
However, while the travel space (especially the social side) begins its inevitable consolidation after a flood of activity and launches, as Semil pointed out, there’s still plenty of opportunity “closer to the top of the decision funnel” — the moments after we decide where it is we want to go. Flights With Friends, a San Francisco-based startup that launches out of beta today, is willing to bet there’s a big opportunity at the top of the funnel in one of social travel’s less-explored segments: Group travel planning.
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Gogobot Teams Up With Travel + Leisure To Bring Expert Reviews, Curated Travel Guides To Social Trip Planning
Since launching in November 2010, social travel startup Gogobot has been on a mission to remove the shoddy design and link farm tendencies from the old world of online travel discovery. Because travel research should be a visual experience, from the get-go Gogobot focused on collecting and curating quality photos from the world’s many travel destinations.
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Free Wifi Coming to London’s Black Cabs
A London company is rolling out free WiFi in black cabs
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HotelTonight is taking over the world — adds Mexico, France & 4 languages
The company will end the year with a total of 17 international cities after starting 2012 with zero outside the US. The HotelTonight app is also now translated, for the first time, into a handful of new languages: French, German, Italian and Spanish.
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FCC tells FAA to ‘boost US competitiveness,’ allow greater use of in-flight devices
The nation’s top wireless dog has told the Federal Aviation Administration’s head that it should “enable greater use of tablets, e-readers, and other portable devices” during flights, according to the Hill. That was the gist of a missive sent from Ju…
