Vacations Blog

UpTake’s mission is to provide the best way to sift and filter through all the travel information, lodging options, and attractions that people need plan a great trip. But in our research, we’ve learned that trip-planning is a complex, circuitous workflow that can differ based on the type of trip or the type of traveler. TravelMuse is one of those companies that are trying to tackle this complex process.

Question: What’s new with TravelMuse?

TravelMuse just announced a new trip planning widget called “Plan-It!” that is kind of like the “Delicious” of travel. You can bookmark pages that you see on the Web and pull it into your TravelMuse Planner.

Question: Isn’t this competitive with UpTake?

No, in fact its complementary. UpTake has already created the comprehensive catalog of travel content out there, based on over 1000 sites. If you are using UpTake, why wouldn’t we you to bookmark our content so you can find it again?

Question: Does this mean you won’t create a trip planner or a bookmarking tool?

No, we never promised to Kevin (TravelMuse’s CEO) that we wouldn’t also have a bookmarklet or planner! In fact, we have one in private alpha. But our philosophy is to give our users choice, and when Kevin came to us with this option, we wanted to stay true to our philosophy by offering access to 3rd party tools like TravelMuse.

Actually, what we really want to focus on is a tool that will allow our users to post reviews to whatever site they are already using. We want to keep our platform open and complementary, and only in that way will we create a great service for travel planners out there.

Question: How does it work?

Over the last week, according to our Google Analytics, one of our top 50 destinations is Gatlinburg, Tennessee. So lets say you are looking for Gatlinburg Hotels, and you discover the MountainLoft which has some pretty good reviews at TripAdvisor, Travelocity, Orbitz, and Yahoo:

If you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you see the Plan-It widget:

The Plan-It Widget pops you to a new page on TravelMuse that allows you to add it to a Trip Plan. The name of the hotel and the link have already been added:

Note that you don’t have to sign up to use this. That’s pretty slick. You just enter your email and TravelMuse will partially register you pending email confirmation. I already have an account, so I’ll log in and add it to a new trip plan. I repeated this process with some activities I found in UpTake, like the Gatlinburg Space Needle, Ripley’s Aquarium of the Smokies, Gatlinburg Guiness World of Records.

Once I’m at TravelMuse, I can add more information based on what I found in TravelMuse, to the TravelMuse Planner.

This is a partner friendly solution because the links in the TravelMuse planner go back to UpTake, where people can book their trip. Of course, in the process of exploring the editorialicious travel content of TravelMuse, you may find other hotels or activities to book!

This is just the beginning of our experiment in taking an open source approach toward travel innovation, and partnering with other visionary companies to solve the huge, complex problem of travel planning!

What other cool features does TravelMuse have?

This is what Jennifer Hwang of TravelMuse said:

• Original editorial content written by seasoned journalists and local experts
• Destination guides with more than 100,000 points of interest, plus stunning photography
• Inspiration Finder helps people discover and plan their best trips based upon their specific wants, needs and constraints
• TravelMuse Planner provides a centralized place to collect, organize and share travel research.

TravelMuse has done an exceptional job integrating Flickr Creative Commons licensed photos into their site. They also have nice destination guides for the top destinations.

Look forward to working even more closely with TravelMuse and other travel planning companies in the future.

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