TripIt

TripIt is for Cruisers too

Given the growing popularity of the cruise industry, we’re pleased to announce that TripIt now supports cruises. In America alone, over 50 million people have taken a cruise and this number continues to swell, according to cruise industry association CLIA. Although I have to confess I’m a cruise virgin, “Cruisers” are loyal fans as 1 in 4 of their trips is a cruise. The number one reason people say they like cruises is that they are good value. Given where the economy seems to be heading, this bodes well for the cruise industry.

While it’s nice to take a cruise and only have to unpack once, there are a surprising number of details to manage with a cruise, which makes TripIt a particularly useful service for Cruisers. There are activities, excursions, flights and potentially hotels to track. In addition, it’s very common for cruisers to add on a pre- or post-cruise trip to their vacation. TripIt can handle it all. TripIt also makes it a snap to share the important details with the people who need to know.  I like knowing someone is having fun, even if I didn’t get invited along.

TripIt can already handle confirmations from the big cruise lines like Carnival, Norwegian Cruise Lines and Celebrity Cruises as well as cruise booking agents like Travelocity.  In the coming weeks, we will be adding a number of smaller cruise lines as well.  So please forward all your cruise confirmations to us at plans [at] tripit.com and if we don't already support the cruise line, we'll add it quickly.

Happy Cruising!

- Gregg

Web 2.0 Expo: Making Email a Useful Web App

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to present at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco on the topic of utilizing email in web applications.  Email sometimes gets a bad rap and is often proclaimed "dead" and yet continues to represent a huge opportunity for developers to enrich their web applications.

The presentation was well attended and I hope people got some value from hearing about the issues discovered and experience gained while building TripIt.  I've embedded my slides from the talk below for all to enjoy.

-- Andy

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TripIt Raises $5.1 Million

It feels great to announce today that TripIt has raised $5.1 million from three world-class investors. Each brings something special to the table that will help us reach our goals.

Our first round investor, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures continues to be a terrific sounding-board on the evolution of the Web among other things. With 30% of our traffic coming from outside the United States already, international expansion is an exciting opportunity for TripIt.  We expect our second investor, the Samwer brothers at European Founders Fund to be super helpful in growing globally. Finally, having one of the largest travel companies in the world become our third investor is a terrific validation of our business, and Sabre Holdings (owners of Travelocity and many other travel services) has the potential to help us further accelerate our growth.

What will we do with the money?  First and foremost to continue to build out our vision for an indispensable travel utility that helps make travel easier. We’re thrilled to see how positively travelers are responding to our service today and can’t wait to see how they will react to all the terrific enhancements that the new funds will enable us to roll out. We will also be adding a few more people to the team in the areas of engineering, product management and community support, but we continue to believe that a small team focused on a specific problem is the best way to keep moving fast.

Of course, all work and no play makes TripIt a dull place, so tonight we’re going to enjoy ourselves. So, if you’re in San Francisco, please stop by the Connecticut Yankee (17th and Connecticut) from 4pm to 6pm and we’ll buy you a cocktail to celebrate!

- Gregg

TripIt is a Webby contender!

Hooray!  Exciting news came across the wire this week when we learned that TripIt is being honored as one of 5 Nominees for a Webby  in Travel, along with category powerhouses Farecast, Kayak, WikiTravel and newcomer TravelFinder .

Webby voting began this week and we need your support.  Since our inception, we’ve had great feedback from our traveler community that has helped us shape the site.  Now we’d like to ask you to give us a hand by voting for TripIt in the People’s Voice Awards here.

As I have learned, the Webbies are run by the  International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences and over 10,000 sites submitted themselves for consideration this year.  From this large pool of applicants, a panel that includes David Bowie, Vint Cerf, Richard Branson, Beck, Arianna Huffington, Harvey Weinstein and Matt Groening selects roughly 15% as Honorees. An even smaller number become Nominees eligible to win an award and TripIt is one of these fortunate few. 

But the real question is . . . What do we wear? Is there a Red Carpet? And how do we get seated next to the glamorati?  Just kidding, but we are very excited to be included in this prestigious event after only six months of operation.  Our goal is to make travel easier for our travelers and it’s nice to get noticed for making headway.

- Gregg

New: TripIt Mobile

We’re thrilled to announce the launch of our new mobile interface, TripIt Mobile!  From virtually any mobile device, just go to http://m.tripit.com and you can quickly and easily access all your trip information.  Early reviews are very positive, and even I’ve been blown away by how useful the feature is now that I’m using it in the real world (I’m traveling right now and TripIt Mobile has already saved me twice!).

What makes TripIt’s mobile application so special?  You just navigate to a single site and you can get ALL your trip information.  Some airlines, hotels, and online travel sites have decent mobile interfaces, but you still have to navigate to each one separately to retrieve your info.  But as long as you are sending all your confirms to plans@tripit.com, you can get everything in one place.  Plus, we show you maps, directions, weather, closeness matches, alerts, and much more.

Part of being a great travel organizer is making it super easy to get your information in, but getting it out is just as important.  So we free up your travel information in several different ways:

• iCal feeds – TripIt keeps your calendar in synch by sending a live feed of your trip information right to Outlook, Google Calendar, and many others.
• Paper printouts – Sometimes low-tech just works better, so when you prefer to carry paper, TripIt’s consolidated printout of your entire itinerary can be a great option.
• TripIt To Me – You can just email a command like “get flight tomorrow” or “get trip today” to plans@tripit.com, and we’ll respond right away with your travel information by email.  This can be helpful when you only have access to email, but not a web browser, or if you want to store a copy of your plans on your mobile device without having to rely on getting a live cell signal.
• Activity Feeds -- You can add your TripIt activity feed to a homepage like MyYahoo, iGoogle, and others, and not even have to log into TripIt to see the interesting things happening in your account.  You'll know when a friend is about to leave on a trip, when they just got back, or when they start planning a new trip.  You can even get updates on changes to your trips and other goodies coming in the future.
• TripIt Mobile – As described above, this is similar to going to the TripIt website to get your information, but we’ve optimized the interface to make it quick and easy to use on your mobile phone.

If you haven’t tried TripIt Mobile yet, I really encourage you to check it out.  And if you are an iPhone user, I think you’ll really like the nifty display we’ve built specifically for you.  We hope you enjoy it, and as always, we look forward to your feedback!