TripIt

Merge multiple trip itineraries into one

We're excited to announce that we just launched trip merging on TripIt! If you have more than one itinerary associated with a single trip, you can use trip merging to create a single convenient itinerary. 

Merging trips is easy.  

First, go to your list of trips, and select “Merge Trips” from the “Options” drop-down menu for the itinerary you want to merge with another.

Then, choose which trip you want to combine it with.

To complete the process, click a trip from your list. All of the travel details from both itineraries will now be in one itinerary. You can merge as many trips as you need to. 

A lot of you have asked us for a way to do this, and we’d love to hear whether merging trips is helpful to you. Let us know what you think!

The Traveler-Centric Future – Part Three- The Interoperable Web

Like mobile technology and social networks, the web itself is evolving to become more open and accessible. Up until now, the Internet has provided a wealth of information for people, but the information has been almost entirely invisible to machines. Increasingly, computers can understand and use this web data too, and web-based applications are becoming better able to interact and share data in the cloud without our involvement. The end result is new services springing up that can take on increasingly complicated tasks to make our lives easier.

Let me take you on a whirlwind tour of the evolution of the Internet and online travel.   

Web 1.0 - I like to call this first generation of internet the “one-way web” because it was really based around ecommerce sites and getting content pushed out to the people. Think early Expedia, or static guidebooks. 

Web 2.0 - In the next big wave of innovation, a host of new Internet companies were created around what is now known as user generated content and social networking. I like to call this the “two-way web”, because the people using the websites are either creating the content or actually are the content, interacting with other users over web platforms. The poster-child for Web 2.0 in travel is TripAdvisor.  

The New Web - Today, there is a new phenomena that promises to change the web. It has many different names. Some people call it the Semantic Web, others the Data Web, Agent Web or even Web 3.0. I don’t know what it will eventually be called, but I do know a defining characteristic of this new web is application to application interaction. For this reason, we like to call it the “interoperable web”.  

This evolution and interoperability is something that has been a topic of conversation for some time. In fact, Tim Berners-Lee, the man widely acknowledged as the inventor of the Internet, predicted this a long time ago. In 1999, he wrote:

“I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A ‘Semantic Web’, which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The ‘intelligent agents’ people have touted for ages will finally materialize.”

Of course, in the travel business, "agents" is a loaded word. The increasingly smart applications that we see emerging are no threat to travel agents for the foreseeable future. However, travelers can look forward to having better access to information wherever and whenever they need it, as well as better web experiences that are getting more personalized every day.  

TripIt Pro Now Available Worldwide

Since we launched TripIt Pro in July, we’ve been inundated with requests from travelers outside the U.S. who wanted to sign up for the service. While we’re sorry to make you wait, we’re happy to announce that TripIt Pro is now available worldwide in nearly every country! 

To thank travelers around the world for their patience, we’re offering the same charter membership special that we offered to U.S. travelers when we initially launched TripIt Pro. To take advantage of charter pricing, you need to have a billing address outside the U.S., sign up for TripIt Pro before Nov. 30, 2009 and enter promo code CHARTER when you sign up. By following these steps, you will lock in a lifetime charter member price of $49 a year. 

If you aren’t yet familiar with TripIt Pro, it’s a premium service that’s ideal for frequent travelers. It works in conjunction with our free TripIt service, with additional tools for extra convenience and peace of mind.

Mobile Alerts – Automatically notifies travelers of any flight delays, cancellations and gate changes.   

Alternate Flights - Gives travelers a helping hand when they need a different route to their destination, fast.

Point Tracker – Keeps track of frequent traveler accounts, balances and expirations, all in one place, with expanded support for more international airlines.

Inner Circle – Automatically shares every trip with key people like an administrative assistant or spouse.

In anticipation of launching TripIt Pro worldwide, we’ve used traveler feedback to steadily expand our supported sites to include hundreds of international airlines, hotels and other travel providers. Please continue to give us your feedback about TripIt Pro at feedback@tripit.com. 

Google Social Search – a big step toward the traveler-centric future

Last week we blogged about social networks, and how they are becoming more portable over time. This week, Google released Social Search, demonstrating this idea in action, in the context of the most popular activity on the web.  

Social Search is Google’s name for the ability to add the activity of people you may know to your search results. Google does this by looking at your Google contacts, and your networks on social sites like Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and Google Reader. Without digging too deeply into the technology, it's plain to see that there are some benefits here for travelers. 

One of the biggest benefits is that you can get trip ideas and travel tips from friends and acquaintances without going any further than the search engine you’re likely to be using anyway. By applying a social filter to search data, the results should be much more personal and relevant, making it easier than ever to learn about travel from other travelers you know and trust.

Social Search has the potential to be a game changer for the travel industry and is a big step toward the traveler-centric future. You can learn more about this exciting new social development in the Google blog. 

The Traveler-Centric Future - Part Two - Social Networking

Social networking isn’t quite everywhere yet, but it’s definitely getting there. The numbers are massive–Gartner projects that the number of people around the world participating in social networks will grow from 118 million in 2008 to 800 million by 2012. Facebook alone has over 300 million users, which means if it were a country, it would be the fourth largest in the world!

Much like the mobile phenomenon, the most interesting thing about social networking is not its size, but how it is changing human behavior. Before social networking came on the scene, people were restricted to one-on-one communication with each other. Today, anyone who wants to can communicate one-to-many, using tools like Twitter. Determined individuals have amassed millions of followers on their networks and have nearly the same influence as institutions. This has implications not just for media but a host of other industries, including travel. 

Leisure travelers are finding services like Facebook and Twitter increasingly useful for research and trip planning. Business travelers are using social networks like LinkedIn for business networking, too.  As technologies like Facebook Connect and Open ID become more widely adopted, your social network is becoming portable. In an interesting twist, the social graph is becoming ubiquitous. The first services to take advantage of this development have been leisure applications that allow people to interact with their networks using third parties outside their network environment. In the future, we’ll see business applications doing the same thing with business networks like those built on LinkedIn.

What does this mean for travelers?

• You’ll be able to see where the important people in your life are going and where they have been.
• They’ll have more visibility into the same information about you.
• It will easier to communicate with fellow travelers and connect with people while you’re on the road.
• Over time, travel planning will become easier, because the likes and dislikes of other travelers will be more accessible.

There is no doubt that social media is here to stay, and it’s changing travel in ways we have yet to fully realize. Stay tuned to see how this fits into the even bigger Traveler-Centric picture!