Tag Archives: trip planner

Ideas for a trip/vacation planner app – Part II

In the last 2 posts, I detailed the market needs, and the itinerary planner user story. Continuing with more features around maintaining content, creating a transactional marketplace for revenue generation, and finally some integration ideas to piggy-back on the success of others.

Content

  • Search public itineraries based on destination
  • System should suggest ‘hot’ holiday options – not in a salesy way – but genuine, recent itineraries that are verified for feasibility, cost estimate, etc.
  • Suggestions/searches should be based searches based on demographic information: age, gender, marital status, profession, origin city
  • Rate, review itineraries
  • Maintain places with linked information: map, entrance fees, best-time-of-day, visit duration
  • Maintain cities, categories, modes of transport, currencies, exchange rates
  • When creating my itinerary, similar itineraries from other users should be suggested – verified, promoted, voted itineraries on top

Marketplace

  • Directly contact agents on public itineraries
  • Agents can view & receive alerts for shared itineraries in their service area
  • Agents can submit bids that be reviewed compared side-by-side with included places/meals & merge itineraries or individual items [versioning]
  • Collaborate/negotiate with agents on a bid, and finally award
  • Allow agents to attach confirmations, visas, etc. – that remain private even when the itinerary is shared

Integration

  • Accommodation: get best prices from top 3 websites for the selected date location
  • Transport: get best prices to the destination, with “flexible dates” option, and suggest best transits worth a stop-over
  • Rentals: for road journeys, suggest available rental options
  • Traffic: use traffic information to estimate journey times between places
  • Fares: get entrance fees and estimated taxi fares
  • City cards: analyze entrance fees and suggest savings from city cards (e.g. iVenture card)

Strengths:

  • Solves a real problem for backpackers
  • Integration & market-place: lot of stickiness for a content + transaction website

Challenges:

  • It might be a while before there is enough content – itineraries
  • Ensuring simple design to handle required interactivity on all browser

Ideas for a trip/vacation planner app

Being a product manager is about not being content with what is around. I looked all around the place for a complete vacation planner app and finally created a wish list of what such an app would constitute. Continuing from the previous post on the topic, here is a high-level user story for each of my needs:

Itinerary Planner

  • Start with a destination of my choice and add places to it [content]
  • Each place can be placed on an interactive itinerary map
  • Add category, description, images, comments, expenses (entrance fees, meals), attachments (bookings, etc.), hyperlinks, mark them as optional
  • View ratings [integration]
  • Auto-insert the place on the interactive calendar based on best-time-of-day information [content] and allow me to adjust
  • Plan the journey between places by specifying mode of transport, journey time & estimate cost [content, integration]
  • Add meals to places & journey with preferred joint & cost estimate
  • Validate if too much is planned for a day based on visit duration [content] and highlight optional places from the ‘Going to’ bucket that can be moved to a ‘May be’ bucket
  • When moving places around, system should remind to update the journey between places
  • Total itinerary cost should be constantly updated and displayed in local currency so I can budget; highlight places & journeys without estimates
  • Filter places on the by category, expense
  • Share my itinerary with others on the website; email the web link
  • Collaborate with co-travellers on the itinerary [roadmap]

Travel

  • Print/Email the itinerary with selected elements
  • Allow including embassy information, emergency numbers, weather, etc.
  • Mobile site to rate places, enter actual cost & time, add public & private notes
  • Update current location, upload photos & add notes that loved ones can view on a shared link
  • Mobile app [roadmap], share location on social media [integration]

In Part 2 of this post, we talk about more features ideas and concept’s strengths and challenges.

 

There isn’t one great trip planner for my vacation!

A few months back I was planning my vacation and things weren’t as easy as I thought. I had figured out the destination, booked air tickets, short-listed places to see and hired a car. The challenge however was to set up a local itinerary. I had X places to cover in Y days with optimized routes so we weren’t spending all our time travelling.  This required finding exact locations & distances between them so as to figure how much could be covered in available time. I had nothing at my disposal but Google Maps & notepad.

Based on my own needs, and the way I go about planning my vacation, here are some high-level ‘market needs’:

  • Itinerary Planer: Create, visualize & execute itineraries on interactive maps & calendar
  • Vacation Content: Genuine holiday suggestions, based on demographics, with verified itineraries[
  • Marketplace: Get quotes from interested agents on my itinerary
  • Integration: Link with booking, review, customer engagement & social media platforms
Google map for my Singapore trip
Settled with a Google map

Am I working on this project? Continue reading There isn’t one great trip planner for my vacation!