[notoriousjpg]

Interestingly, not really. I mean there's stackexchange and quora but its mostly people asking questions as they plan their itinerary. r/travel is basically r/travelpictures

TA Forums seem to get worse every year, so do their reviews. Top reviews for each destination are moving towards bookable tours and guides as more and more operators realise how important reviews are and start to try and semi game the system.

I'm working on something in this space that is taking a more data driven approach to travel, starting with destination discovery. Basically we're trying to solve the fact that there isn't a catalogue of travel destinations with basic info like weather, activities, safety, language.

Try searching google for 'safe travel destination with hiking and wineries that is warm in december' Google will serve up pages of Top 10 lists.

We developed a chatbot[1] to capture some early feedback with a simplified flow into a personalised set of results[2]. We're working on something more directly queryable.

Would be interested in your feedback if you have any.

[1] m.me/getcluey (sorry, facebook) [2] getcluey.com [3] https://www.getcluey.com/en/result/wK2fw48Wrh

[somada141]

Given the popularity of the topic I'm a little surprised that quality content independent of sponsorship has yet to surface. Quora is a big ad-fest so I wouldn't base my decisions on it.

I was particularly interested in travel-related up-to-date material, such as the one about komodo island closing down. Other such topics would be "Don't go to Townsville, QLD cause there's floods" or "The amazing festival X in happening next week in Y".

I had a look at Cluey and I definitely appreciate some of the key criteria you're integrating namely safety and the variety of activities. In fact I was just researching topics like "Is it safe to drive around Romania in 2019". A factual list of tips like "petty crime and muggings have gone up in Bogota, don't flaunt your 8k camera" depending on destination would be invaluable for me when planning a long-trip.

I would also like to see a breakdown of how my most compatible destinations were selected after the fact (eg safety score, environmental impact score, etc).

All in all I really like the idea and registered. I hope you guys launch something great so keep up the good work!

PS I'd appreciate info on where stats and info are collected from when presented with results so I can evaluate whether I agree with the facts used in the calculation.

[notoriousjpg]

Thanks! Really appreciate it! Yeah eventually we'd like to provide a writeup of the data and algorithm that is accessible - something like: https://algorithms-tour.stitchfix.com/

Did you find the scoring and guided experience helpful or would you rather just a big list of criteria you can filter from? We played around with the former but think the latter may actually be more appealing to more people. That way compatibility is binary, either it matches your criteria or not.

Rome2Rio are definitely a company we'd like to learn from and partner with. There's a surprising amount of aussie travel startups (adioso, wotif etc) that have done well.

[somada141]

> Thanks! Really appreciate it! Yeah eventually we'd like to provide a writeup of the data and algorithm that is accessible - something like: https://algorithms-tour.stitchfix.com/

Whoa never saw that before, fancy as. Yeah, I feel that a nice writeup would lend credibility to your algos.

> Did you find the scoring and guided experience helpful or would you rather just a big list of criteria you can filter from? We played around with the former but think the latter may actually be more appealing to more people. That way compatibility is binary, either it matches your criteria or not.

You see this is where it gets tricky. The people that hang around HN tend to be more technical and likely used to more convoluted UIs that allow them to be efficient and flexible.

At the same time your market is likely to be less techie so I fear that my opinion may be biased and even harmful.

That being said I supposed having a clean and simple default with an advanced alternative a click away would satisfy both crowds though the latter can wait post-launch so you can see what the feedback is like.

As a quick note I think even the simple version would benefit from 'justification' behind the recommendation, i.e., we suggested Hawaii because while expensive it has top-notch surfing (assuming they selected that), is safe, LGBTQ-friendly, etc. Even if you skip the numbers you make it easy for people to compromise on things and rethink their choices before trying again. Otherwise I feel it'd become an arduous trial-n-error for people to get the confirmation bias they're looking for :P.

> Rome2Rio are definitely a company we'd like to learn from and partner with. There's a surprising amount of aussie travel startups (adioso, wotif etc) that have done well.

Lol something about living thousands of miles away from most destinations motivates that sort of startup I suppose :D.

[notoriousjpg]

> Lol something about living thousands of miles away from most destinations motivates that sort of startup I suppose :D.

Yes definitely. Actually we're slightly worried that we've got too much of an australian centric view on travel. Everything is 12 hours away so we end up only planning big trips instead of many small ones. That said nearby places are often overlooked. Cook Islands and Dili have been appearing quite a few times recently.

> As a quick note I think even the simple version would benefit from 'justification' behind the recommendation

Yes, 100%. The results page has a legend of sorts and it shows red when criteria is not compatible (after you select the destination card).

Dynamic text has been a bit challenging for us. We will revisit it again soon because I agree, people benefit from the explanation. However we want to avoid a scenario where the dynamic text for Results 1-5 are identical (or effectively identical if we just replace words with their synonyms)

[afarrell]

> quality content independent of sponsorship has yet to surface

Can you name some places where it does exist? The only one that comes to mind is Wikimedia, but I suspect thats because I just don't know that much about their funding.

HN, for example, is sponsored by ycombinator.

[somada141]

Sadly that was my point, I can think of none. The standard places like Yelp, Trip Advisor, Google, etc all fall under the category of crowdsourced and highly-susceptible to advertising agendas.

Sad as it is, travel is a hard category to get unbiased information on given how big an industry tourism is.

[notoriousjpg]

(me again)

News wise I think something like this is good: https://www.predicthq.com/ but i dont think their product is necessarily built for B2C. It's more something theyd sell to the operations centre of Uber etc. Otherwise yes i agree with you, travel news isn't really news. It's basically all some form of native advertising as the wanderlust-y articles are usually surrounded by flight deals and resort packages.

In terms of destination content for people planning travel, one stream of thought we'd have whilst working on Cluey is:

Right now travel is very supply side driven. Millions of travelers arrive in Destination X but the local tourism operators largely sell safe, common denominator stuff. They don't have visibility of what the actual Demand is, and the operators themselves become generalists.

Right now no platform can justify collecting your travel related personal information/preferences, because none of them can do anything with it. I think Cluey can (hopefully) justify asking for that information. In turn we hope that allows us to connect travelers with locals who are compatible with what you're looking for. That hopefully will remove the weeks of research needed to plan a trip, and lead to more diverse experiences in more destinations.

Our thinking is still crystallizing but those are some of the ideas we're playing around with...

[somada141]

Btw you may be able to get some inspiration from, or even partner with, Rome2Rio [1] for the transportation part. I interviewed with them before and while I didn't like their tech their results are pretty impressively detailed and sourced.

[1] https://www.rome2rio.com/