What is it written in and how much work is left to do?
It seems google/gmail are backing this quite extensively, which is how it's finally found traction.
When people are publishing what they want, that looks to be a good starting point for travel/lodging companies to come in and make offers to these folks.
"You're looking to stay in Bucharest on Sept 18 and 19? Our hotel can offer you XZY for $ABC on those nights."
Sort of like lendingtree-model for travel. Not quite sure why that's not taken off yet, other than, perhaps, larger company IT systems?
This could possibly work well for smaller regions - contact a local chamber of commerce and have them have all the local businesses make offers to people looking to stay in areas on specific days.
Basically... define a format and let them integrate with you if they want access to the market you've defined, not the other way around.
I think Sygic did a great job with identifying the key user stories:
1. Ability to see a list of interesting places to generate ideas (they've partnered with Fodors, the content is comprehensive, at least for Iceland)
2. Ability to set my travel dates and schedule places that I want to visit on specific days
3. Ability to see places on a map so that I can schedule more efficiently. (I was able to schedule places in different regions on different dates, and thereby minimise driving times)
4. Ability to view and order daily itineraries (list + map) and ability to estimate travel time for a given itinerary. (This helped me avoid being over ambitious and gave me plenty of room to breathe during the trip)
5. Ability to see/book hotels on a map that have availability on my dates. I ended up making all my hotel reservations (4 nights) through their Booking.com integration. Never have I been happier to click on an affiliate link! The ability to visually plan your days and nights within the same interface really helps. Without this, I would have done what most last-minute travellers in Iceland do – book a hotel in Reykjavik (capital) for the entire stay and take day trips in/out. This would have severely limited my coverage of Iceland and cost more.
6. Ability to take my itinerary with me. They have a easy to use (free) mobile app with premium features e.g. offline maps. Paid for the premium features but didn't end up using them as internet worked great in Iceland!
Overall, the interface was really well done, albeit with a 3-4 hour learning curve. I found myself needlessly bouncing back and forth between ideation and scheduling.
I jotted down a few ideas while I was using it:
- Break down planning into several stages: Ideation, Scheduling, Reservations. This would allow the interface to be more streamlined and reduce cognitive complexity of planning
- Provide the ability to algorithmically cluster places into days and find shortest path for overall trip
Anyway, wish can looks great! I'd love to contribute. I'm a pretty good programmer (iOS/Web), professionally a senior product manager, and also have decent design skills. Let me know if I can help. I haven't coded for the web in a while so would prefer to team up with someone with up-to-date front-end skills.