I think it is also important to look at a few exisiting examples of online travel literature. There is actually quite a lot of stuff out there that does allow the user to interactively put together travel information and even to export it into a pdf. In the following article I will give an overview:
The main column of the tripwolf travel guide
Tripwolf is a social network around travelling. At the core is a guide which gives insider information about destinations but there is also the possibility to post images in a gallery, to book hotel rooms and to write travel blogs. The networking aspect is quite interesting as this is a platform for individual travellers. Therefore people can actually meet fellow travellers online. Once you sign on, Tripwolf actually allocates you what they call a trip guru, who sends you a friendship request and thus supposedly supports you. Not exactly sure but I could imagine that those “gurus” get payed by Tripwolf or maybe just like in other platforms this is all about status. This means that supporting other users somehow hightens a user’s status on the platform - there is actually such a thing as a top trip guru - and that some users simply compete via this ranking.
The scrapbook of the Tripwolf website
The most interesting thing with regards to our project is probably the so called scrap book in the side bar. The scrap book allows one to drag and drop information about venues from the main middle column and to collect them there. Later those information can be exported into a pdf file and printed out on paper. Thus one can turn the digital information into an analogue leaflet.
However I find this leaflet rather disappointing. In my case I have chosen Vienna as a destination. Thus the first few pages give me a very rough overview over vienna which is more or less a collection of addresses of all kinds of hotspots (culture, sport, nightlife, hotels, etc…). I had manually added the Stefansdom as one of the attractions I wanted to visit which shows on the guide as a single page with a few images and a few lines of text.
Besides the rather meak content the process of putting together the trip via the scrapbook is rather clumsy I find. I would prefer a layout preview which shows me all the content and lets me add and delete information.
As it is I would rather buy myself a proper guidebook than using this as an analogue tool for getting around my destination.
An excerpt from the pdf that can be exported via Tripwolf's scrapbook
Whilst TripWolf concentrates on aspects of social networking, GoPlanit’s focus is more on the integration of various Web2.0 applications and they do this quite cleverly: The planning of a trip in this case is around itinerarys and accordingly one starts with a calendar overview. One has the choice to either add activities individually to this calendar or to go for an instant predefined itinerary (as this is a beta this can currently only be done with a few destinations mainly in the US). However, any kind of items can be deleted, edited or added to and from the itinerary.
An instant itinerary of a trip to New York generated by the GoPlannit website. Items can be added, edited and deleted.
There is also a very smart mash-up with Google Calendars mapping all events, hotels, venues etc… of the itinerary onto the map of the City/area that one intends to visit. But what I think could be the killer application is the iCal integration of the itinerary. This means that via iCal the whole trip schedule could be accessed via iPhone or any other iCal enabled smartphone. This means that there is hardly a need to print out any information.
Obviously the platform also contains a journal function. What is currently missing from this seems to be the possibility of adding photos. However, this is a really clever tool and one to watch.
A mash-up that maps all items in the itinerary to a Google map.
more reviews to follow…
Tags: travel guide, travel planner, web 2.0