Road Warriors, meet TripIt Pro

Today we announced TripIt Pro, our new premium service for frequent travelers. There’s a great write-up in TechCrunch and lots of fun chatter on Twitter too.

A small group of travelers have been using TripIt Pro for months and we’re excited to release it to the public. If you like TripIt, you’re going to love TripIt Pro! Consistent with our mission to make travel easier, TripIt Pro is made up of all new features—loyalty point tracking, flight monitoring, mobile alerts, alternate flight options and automated sharing—designed to address the most common requests from our busiest travelers. 

TripIt Pro is the first big step in making proactive use of the information our travelers are storing, and do more of the work behind the scenes, “automagically” if you will. Because TripIt understands when, where and with whom you are traveling, we have the information we need for TripIt Pro to monitor changes to trips, track point balances, issue mobile alerts, etc.

A few things that I’ve found most helpful about TripIt Pro …

• Check-In alerts come exactly 24 hours before flight time, so I was able to snag Group A on Southwest the other week
• A Gate Change alert helped me avoid missing a connection last month, and I helped a couple on my flight with all the Alternate Flight Options
• I finally have one place for all my frequent flyer info that shows me how close I am to elite across my accounts
• No more forgetting to share all my trips with my wife, she’s now in my Inner Circle and sees all my trip details automatically (definitely the most important feature :)

Some of these new TripIt Pro features are costly to provide, so we’re asking people to pay for Pro, making this our first premium service. We thought long and hard about this decision and have worked to deliver a high-quality service at a fair price that we believe will truly save frequent travelers some stress, time and money.

Please note, the core TripIt service that you’ve come to know and love will continue to be free and will continue to improve. And to our users outside the US, we’re working hard to support text messaging and recurring billing to non-US accounts, so please standby for TripIt Pro support outside the US.

This release is also an important step forward in TripIt’s strategic evolution. In September 2007, TripIt opened to the public and made a big splash with our Itinerator email parsing technology that made it possible for travelers to create itineraries from their emails. In October 2008, we launched TripIt on the LinkedIn platform, one of many social sites and services we now integrate with. In January 2009, we released our open API that has opened up access for authorized third-parties to improve and create new services for TripIt travelers. Now in June 2009, we give you TripIt Pro.  Pro is just a little taste of many cool services we have planned in the future!

As always, we can’t wait to hear what you think. Keep sending all your feedback to feedback@tripit.com. Thanks!

- Gregg Brockway

Comments

[Kim]

Too rich for my blood, sorry. Nothing in the App Store even approaches the intro price, and the fact that you have to pay it annually just seals the deal. I'd have paid half that, once. It's just too easy between the free TripIt app, my flight tracker app and the web to get all the info that's in it. Yes, not in one spot, but not inconvenient enough to justify the cost.

[Leonard Rosenthol]

having been one of the folks that was invited to test out the Pro features - I have to say that I LOVE THEM! Notifications have definitely saved me on a couple of recent trips and the new Points Tracker was exactly what I needed to remind me I have a bunch of points that I had forgotten about!

[Alex Murkes]

When are you guys going to fix the Google time zone sync issue? See here for details:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Calendar/thread?tid=3de2008d3df62cc6&hl=en

TripIt is great and I would get Pro, but this issue makes TripIt more annoying than useful. Basically, I stopped using TripIt because of it.

Also, your customer service communication isn't that great, which also makes me hesitant to do business. For example, I asked support for the status of this issue and if there is a way to get notification when it is resolved, but heard nothing back.

Thanks, hope you improve on both fronts soon.

[LouieNet]

This is a great price for the services that are offered. It is much better than the $20/month or $200/yr that was being considered previously.

My time and effort to do these services manually on my own is worth more than $49/year.

Thank you!

[Matt Albiniak]

I would love to try it out, but as a general rule, I never do trials that require a credit card at the start of the trial - those stink of "no, really, it's easy to cancel!!!1"

If I can try pro without a credit card, and on day 30, either be prompted to downgrade to free or provide card info, I'd be game.

Maybe next time...

[Kurt]

TripIt is great, but the price for Pro is way too steep for what you are offering. You need to find a better monetization plan, because this one will fail.

These features are nice, but nothing that can't be had from other apps for free. Having them in one place just isn't enough incentive. You need to add these features to the free service in an attempt to increase the value of the service and your user numbers. Then you need to find a way to make money by charging partner sites or unobtrusive ads.

Sorry, I'll stick with the free version.

[scottjl]

Well I bought into it for a year, we'll see how it goes from here. I'd love to see some of these features pushed down to the iPhone client though (which should remain free for Pro users).

[Jaakko H]

Is there a length limit to the blog comments or did the system just not like my comment (that I tried to post)? Or are there some simple things that are not allowed to be mentioned in the comments (such as Dopplr)?

Well, some other time.

[Brad]

If you want to get me to consider a paid service, the least you can do is give me easy access to full details of what you are offering.

[ES]

Way too much money - especially considering that notifications about travel changes probably vary wildly in quality depending on which firms you are traveling with, and so the app might or might not help you. It would have have to offer travel agent like features (checkin, seat selection, reservations on the iPhone) for me to consider paying anything.

Also, even though this app is being charged for, I wonder if users will be subject to advertising as well..?

[BS]

Would love to try it, but not until you guys decide that devices other than the iPhone will be fully supported. As a die-hard blackberry user, I'd gladly pay your annual fee, but not for lousy WAP browser access. Build me an app and then we'll talk.

[DG]

I would love to have a better connection to Amadeus (yes I am german). I usually get my booking number, enter checkmyflights with it and forward it via mail to Tripit. Ok if it is for free but I for example would be willing to pay for smoother interfaces. Enhancing the iPhone App with an option "Add to calendar" would be great too (could be for the Pro Account)

[fearless_fool]

I took the bait for Tripit Pro -- the 20% discount on Virgin alone will pay for it.

[Laura GRaham]

I agree with most. Love TripIt, great idea! The Pro Price however is just too high for what it is. Especially when thrown in the app store with all the other apps. If there were an option to pay month by month rather than a yearly fee, then maybe. It's hard to dish out the $50 not knowing if it will be as buggy as the free edition has been.

[rk]

This is more than worth $49 per year. I wish the Iphone app was a little better graphically looking but hey, what can I say, it's version 1.3, I'm sure 2.0 will be great.

Also, I received a 20% of Virgin America flight coupon for signing up, that more than makes up for the $49 annual fee.

Thanks TripIt

[Ron]

I finally decided to try it since the $49 fee was higher than I think it is worth but tolerable, and since I would have 30 day to cancel, but now I see it is $69. Forget it! At $30 I would bite.