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Something for the weekend? [Trazzler]

Tuesday, July 1st, 2008

Another new travel inspiration site launched last week - Trazzler.com.

Seems to be focussing on small events and activities that are within a short travel distance and therefore ideal for a weekend away…..  I actually enjoyed clicking around for a few minutes - ticking off places that I have been to. As a result, I now have a travel personality….

 

trazzler.gif

 

Yep - apparently I will go anywhere for Agatha Christie and Fawlty Towers…… ummm…. more work required on the algorithm I think!

I enjoyed clicking around but I am not sure there is enough there yet to “grab me” and get me coming back for more (more content in the USA though, which is to be expected as this is where the company is based).

However it is still early days….. and its very much in beta-mode. Monetisation looks to be via Kayak flights & hotels. Unusually it also seems to be devoid of user feedback - with what looks like expert written tour reviews rather than UG content.

They also need to work on their geography a little…. one of their tours has Brazil in North America whilst Shetland has been placed in England….

 

shetland.gif

 

As one of my customers is the Visit Scotland (Shetland) tourist board I just mentioned this to them and they are not amused!

A nice site entering an overcrowded sector but it doesn’t really cover what I happen to get upto at weekends….. Last weekend I took part in a sporting event, beating Lewis Hamilton who was also taking part. I also received a kiss from a double Olympic gold medallist at the prize giving when picking up a prize….. anyone guess the sport?


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5 Responses to “Something for the weekend? [Trazzler]”


  1. July 1st, 2008 at 5:46 pm
    Elizabeth

    Interesting site- I will have to check it out. Too bad you have to create an account.

  2. July 1st, 2008 at 5:53 pm
    anon

    Sailing ?

  3. July 1st, 2008 at 5:57 pm
    Alex Bainbridge

    Hi Elizabeth,
    Thanks for your comment
    I was thinking exactly the same. I almost didn’t create an account but did in the end because I wanted to write a review. I really don’t like sites where there is an initial “wall” that you have to cross before you can start finding it useful….. On this site for example it would have been quite easy to make the “account creation” functionality only necessary later in the process (holding a temporary account in a cookie or similar)

  4. July 1st, 2008 at 6:12 pm
    Alex Bainbridge

    Well done anon!

    Round the Island race….. 1800 boats…. Round the Island (Isle of Wight, South coast, UK)

  5. July 1st, 2008 at 6:19 pm
    Adam Rugel

    Hi Alex,

    Thanks for looking Trazzler over. I’m glad you enjoyed paging through the site.

    The error on the Scotland address is fixed: http://trazzler.com/trips/up-helly-aa-festival. We have several geolocators at work that automatically translate written addresses into lat/lng. It didn’t work in this case, but our mapping system will continue to improve.

    Regarding user input: that’s what we’re working on now. Our user publishing tools will launch in just a few days. At that point, our TripPages will come from several sources: 1) in-house community editors; 2) top-tier bloggers; 3) top-tier publishers; 4) users. Here’s an example of a TripPage written by a hand-picked blogger: http://trazzler.com/trips/outstanding-in-the-field. If you’re in the UK and have travel-related blog (skiing, dining, hiking, hotels…), let us know - we’d love to drive traffic to your site.

    Thanks again for the review.
    Adam

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Comments for this post will be closed on 1 July 2009.




This blog is about travel ecommerce with a focus on topics of interest to tour operators & travel companies

Alex has previously started up a small tour operator (5 staff) and also worked for leading "dot coms", airlines, hotel chains and tour operators advising and project managing web, ecommerce and reservation system projects.

Alex is available for travel ecommerce consulting via Travel UCD. Travel UCD also operates TourCMS - a web based reservation system for small tour operators

I will be at WTM London
Thursday 13th Nov
Happy to meet for a chat!

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