“Product 360″ is a product review section in Travopia. Here, we pick a travel product, study it, analyse its positives and negatives, highlight its USP, usability for customers. Today, in Product 360, we are featuring “Tripalong“.

What is Tripalong? 

Tripalong is a platform for travellers to share their flight itinerary, meet friends in airport / in flight.

How Tripalong works?
You login to Tripalong, add your flight details, lets say IndiGo Airlines 6E142, April 20th, 1:45 PM, from Bangalore to Delhi. If you have connected Tripalong with your Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, then Tripalong will tell you the following:

• Facebook, LinkedIn friends living in Delhi
• Facebook, LinkedIn friends in your flight, IndiGo 6E142
• Facebook, LinkedIn friends flying from Bangalore to Delhi at the same time as yours
• Facebook, LinkedIn friends at Bangalore airport at the same time as yours
• Facebook, LinkedIn friends at Delhi airport at the same landing time as yours
• Facebook, LinkedIn friends visiting Delhi at the same time as yours

Then, you will know which of your friends are going to be near / next to you in airport / flight. You then catch with up them, travel together to airport, check-in together, travel together, have fun.

Can you make new friends?
Yes, you can. If you have shared your itinerary (as public), then the fellow passengers (who have account in Tripalong) in the same flight will be able to see you, send you a request (if they like you ). Once you accept the request, then Tripalong shares the contact details between you both.

Does Tripalong connect to any airlines directly or to GDS to retrieve flight information?
No. You enter the origin, destination and date of travel. Tripalong lists all flights matching that combination. You manually add the flight details.

Do we see practical usage of Tripalong among customers?<
The concept is good. But, not everyone will remember or would want to login to another site (Tripalong) to share their flight details and know their trip along friends. We see this as an extra step. Tripalong will be viral if they integrate it with major online travel agencies where customers book their flight.

Example: Smitha books Air India in www.makemytrip.com. During the booking process, makemytrip alerts Smitha that 3 of her Facebook friends are also in the same flight. Smitha gets excited and completes the booking. Now, how is that!
There are lot of extended business models that can be derived, but we will stop here

Do Tripalong have a mobile website?
No, not yet. Given the fact that the entire travel ecosystem is rapidly adopting mobile in their trip planning and sharing, we think Tripalong should implement a mobile friendly website or a native app soon.

Any unique feature in Tripalong?
Yes. The website is quite engaging. For a first timer, the site will guide you step by step. You land on a page, and the site displays a small popup on how to use certain features in a website and the popup disappears after few seconds. In our analysis journey in Tripalong, we found this feature quite useful and engaging. See pictures below.

Who developed Tripalong?
TenTenTen is the company that conceptualized, designed and implemented Tripalong. MakeMyTrip launched the product.

Who are the competitors of Tripalong?
Planely, a Denmark based company does exactly the same model. Also, recently, KLM Airlines announced their “Social Seating” concept that’s more or less in the same model as Tripalong.

Author: Karthick Prabu