In a crowded market TripWiser is helping families to plan their holidays. We spoke to CEO David Reichman to gain some insight into their unique startup.
Where did your idea come from?
In the last few years, when I was preparing trips with my family (2 weeks in Costa Rica or long weekend in San Diego), I had to jump from site to site, from review to review, and ended up collecting bits of pieces of information in an attempt to assemble a trip, and then putting all of that on a map to see the route, and after that visit individual hotel's website to see what kind of accommodations available. This was too much work. So with TripWiser we set about to create something different. We decided that a site that provides ready-to-go trip itineraries that have been created by people (peers and experts), with associated activities and things to do, with descriptions and rating, with map integration and calendar integration would be something everyone can appreciate and enjoy. Travel should be fun, not project management.
What is your elevator pitch?
Headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, TripWiser is a state-of-the-art social trip planning and itinerary building site for family travel to or within the United States and Canada. The site leverages the collective wisdom of users and provides a complete trip planning service that takes project management out of travel and brings a whole new meaning to family travel in America. Through a pleasantly stylish and strikingly modern interface TripWiser allows users to select from thousands of ready-to-go itineraries created by real travelers and travel experts, each containing popular destinations, accommodations, activities, attractions, and other interesting things to do. Users can clone someone else's trips and modify them on the fly via convenient drag-and-drop functionalities.
How is your proposition different from competitors?
It actually works. The travel market is very crowded with many good players but we believe that we are doing something different and filling a real void in this market specifically for family travelers. The way we plan to succeed is by focusing on quality, by providing the highest quality of service possible across all aspects of our business: content, design, functionalities and capabilities. We have partnered with market leaders like Wcities, Viator IHS and and Kayak to provide the best user experience in Social Trip Planning and the best validation for our direction is the very positive feedback that we are getting from the community. e.g. http://www.geekismyname.com/?p=34
Why will you succeed?
Since this is our passion, we are not just motivated by hype we have identified a very tough problem that we are trying to solve. We've been around the block long enough to understand that this is a marathon in a sprint pace. We have a very strong team with many years of experience in operation, technology and travel that is extremely focused on making TripWiser the best Social Trip Planning out there.
What are your biggest successes so far?
Users are embracing TripWiser and recommending us to their friends, this is how we grow by a "word of mouth". Online Travelers are gaining real value and providing us with great feedback. We have already received a series of thumbs-up reviews from top experts in the technology crowd. Sites like Mashable.com, Killerstartups.com, Blogger.com, LifeHacker.com have all judged TripWiser to be among the leading trip planning sites in the Online Travel industry.
How will/do you make money?
We are already making money from both ads and referrals, but our goal is to make money without compromising the user experience. It is very easy to optimize the site for revenue but we aren't confused we have founded this company to provide a great service first while building a viable business.
Have you received funding? If so, how much and from whom?
We are funded by few very powerful angel investors. They provide us with wise advice and great contacts, I couldn't wish for more. We will probably start our first institutional round soon.
Source: FrostFire
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