from Hacker News

Our travel planning platform provides a purpose-built organizer for “careful planners” to research and plan their trip. This organizer comes pre-populated with information to research every aspect of a trip. Users can also gain assistance from our community of pro and semi-pro specialists who have targeted expertise and local relationships.

We think that an effective travel market-network has to cater to four key aspects as part of an integrated workflow: 1. Dreaming: The inspiration/desire 2. Planning: The research 3. Buying: Booking and itinerary creation 4. Consuming: Everything done on the trip and then shared

For this to happen, certain conditions needed to exist. Over several decades, one or more of these conditions has been made possible (ie., the internet and smartphones) with some materializing only recently (ie., collaborative economy, niche communities)

Now that these conditions finally exist, a travel market-network can become a reality. What’s needed is a community-driven platform that bridges the information sources to the consumer by offering a systematic research and planning method. This is what will bring the Dream-Plan-Buy-Consume aspects of travel together to be catered to effectively by this market-network.

Status: We used a prototype to validate the “single player” utility of the product before we moved on to the network effect pieces. We are currently revamping the user experience based on feedback.