Product 360: VideoTravelers.com: New Website Dedicated For Travel Videos
A new website called VideoTravelers.com that focusses only on travel videos has been released by Nathan Schacherer and Sofia von Porat. Nathan and Sofia are also the founders of MySkiholiday and AsWeTravel. There are other travel video websites like TripFilms, CompulsiveTraveler, TravelChannel in the market, but there aren’t plenty of travel industry focussed sites.
Product 360: Travelzoo Launches Refreshed iPhone App
Travelzoo, a global travel deals company has launched a totally refreshed iPhone app. Travelzoo calls it as ‘second generation iPhone app’. The previous version of the iPhone app was downloaded by 1.5 million users across the globe. Travelzoo also has an Android app too. Travelzoo says that one-third of their traffic comes from mobile devices.
5 Marketing Lessons To Learn From Star Tours New Advertisement Video
Star Tours, UK based travel agency has released a promotional video that showcases various places tourist attractions in Europe. It’s a one minute video clip, but very beautifully executed. Pictures speak louder than words, but videos speak even louder than pictures. With social media in hand, a good video will automatically go viral and spread the word.
Product 360: WhichAirline: Visual Meta-Search Provider In Airline Industry
Travel reservation engines are turning more visual. The entire shopping and booking experience is made visually appealing by travel players like Hipmunk in hotel sector and QuickAirLink in flight sector. An addition to visual flight search provider is – WhichAirline, a company that searches 100,000 airline routes and offers cheap flight search results in an innovative display.
AudioCompass’ Travel Audio Guides For Smartphones And Not-So-Smartphones
Recent technology developments have greatly changed the way travelers plan and enjoy their trip. With the advent of mobile, travelers started to use it as a digital guide right from getting directions, reading reviews, sharing feedback. One of the uncommon use of mobile during travel is to use it as a ‘guide’, a replacement for a human guide. Though this trend has picked up in the US and UK, in India the audio-guide-in-mobile market is slowly catching up. This is mainly to do with the adoption rate of smartphones. AudioCompass, India based
iXiGo’s Windows 8 App Review – Not So Happy
Last week, iXiGo, a leading meta-search engine in India announced its presence in Windows 8 app store. iXiGo was launched in 2007 and it has picked up momentum without much of advertising. Recently the company raised $18.5 million funding from SAIF Partners and MakeMyTrip. We had the opportunity to review iXiGo’s Windows 8 app. We are presenting our detailed review here with screenshots.
Nokia Here – Sets The Mapping Industry On Fire – The Map Battle Begins
Nokia is here. Grammatically this statement is right, but semantically the “Nokia is here” statement is wrong. We will tell you why. Yesterday, Nokia re-branded their existing ‘Nokia Maps’ feature to ‘Here’. The existing maps feature is revamped with lot many new features and Nokia is now calling the packaged service as ‘Here’, note – Nokia has dropped the company name for this service, so its no more ‘Nokia Maps’, henceforth the service will be called as ‘Here’. The reasoning behind this is
HolidayIQ launches ‘Holiday Ideas’ – A Holiday Discovery Tool For India
HolidayIQ, India’s leading website for user generated reviews on destinations and hotels today launched a new section on their website – “Holiday Ideas“. Earlier in Q2, 2012, the company refreshed their homepage completely and launched it with many new sections – Holiday awards, Trending trips, Facebook integration, Better search, Updated map display, Best selling products and Traveler types. ‘Holiday Ideas’ adds to the company’s major product release list.
JoGuru: India Based Feature Rich Social Travel Startup
Social media based travel startups are mushrooming nowadays. In the last 2 years, there are at least a dozen of social travel startups that have come up. Few notable names are Trippy, Gogobot, Wanderfly, TripBirds, EverPlaces, Gtrot, Tripl. Latest to this list is – JoGuru, India based social travel startup founded by Praveen Kumar (IIM L), Saket Newaskar (MDI, Gurgaon), Karthik Ramachandra (IIM I). JoGuru was launched early this year as an invitation-only product, and then later opened up for everyone.
Product 360: All New "Tripbirds": Book Hotels With Help From Your Social Channel Friends
Tripbirds was launched on March 2012 with focus on social travel – pulling recommendations from friends and helping the traveler in planning the trip. But, on June 2012 Tripbirds announced that they will be shuting down the service for sometime and would relaunch it very soon. The company received angel investors from notable investors.
Product 360: Quickairlink.com: Disruptive User Interface For Flight Search
In the last two years, many innovations have happened in the travel industry.These innovations range from website redesigns, new feature rollouts, offering differentiated customer service etc. One segment that has huge scope for innovation is – the way customers use travel websites. We have seen very different design experiences created by companies like Hipmunk, Skyscanner, UTrip, Marriott, Tourdust. The recent addition to this list is definitely “Quickairlink“.
Product 360: Lifeisoutside: Book Your Weekend Getaways Near Your City
How many of us have complained that there is nothing to do nearby your city over a weekend? All of us get a weekend off, but have we seen all the places near our city? Are we bored of the malls, cinema halls, multiplexes? That’s the problem Lifeisoutside.com is trying to solve. They provide only short-break packages for 9 major cities in India. Lifeisoutside believes there are at least half a million places to see in India.Product 360: Cleartrip’s New Mobile App For iOS – Clearly Thumbs Up
What’s Cleartrip very famous for? What’s that one thing that all customers of Cleartrip speak about? Yes, its “design”, their simple and neat user interface. Customers have been experiencing the great user experience on their laptops /desktops. Today, Cleartrip launched its app for iOS platform. We experienced the iOS app and decided to do our famous “Product 360″ review. The app can be downloaded for FREE from Apple App Store, under the name “Cleartrip”. Right now, only flight can be booked using the app.
Product 360: Superfly – A Flight Search Engine That Takes YOU Into Account And Offers Discounts
Gone are the days when the meta-search engine just gives us price and flight details by querying various websites. Now, there are many innovative meta-search engines in market. Superfly is a great example. Superfly, founded by Jonathan Meiri and Zviki Cohen, is a meta-search engine that takes into account the travellers loyalty program details and offers discounts on fare. This might look simple. It is not just a direct connection from Superfly to all the airlines frequent flyer systems.
Product 360: Flight Booking Engine in IRCTC : Wakeup Call For Other OTAs
IRCTC has launched the much awaited flight booking feature in their website. The flight booking page can be accessed at www.air.irctc.co.in. For majority of the Indians, IRCTC means “train-booking-website” (though they have other products like hotel booking, car booking etc). Now, IRCTC has changed the equation of this game by launching “air product”. With the addition of flights, IRCTC now qualifies as a complete OTA and can be competitive to the major OTAs of India – MakeMyTrip, Yatra, ClearTrip, Expedia, Travelocity.
