New Ways to Trade Travel Secrets Online

There was an article in yesterday’s WSJ about a new website, www.tripmates.com, that is designed to enable travelers to share tips and secrets first-hand. While personal reviews have been standard on many travel web sites for quite some time, tripmates has taken it a step further. It has modeled itself after myspace and other social networking sites in the sense that it requires people to register for the site and post personal profiles. Info required ranges from favorite places to travel (which would be expected) to things such as personal music taste. It’s designed to let other users decide for themselves how valuable an opinion of a vacation spot, hotel or restaurant, etc. is based on the personal tastes and interests of the person providing the review. The site also allows for email communication between users. I wonder if Fodor’s, Let’s Go and the like will start experiencing a hit in guidebook sales, as they have already started to follow suite and add reviews and online forums to their websites. I for one, plan on checking out tripmates (or any one of the various user-generated travel review sites that are out there – gusto.com, travel.yahoo.com, realtravel.com, igougo.com, tripadvisor.com) the next time I travel instead of relying on the guidebooks, many of which have been mediocre at best in the past in their ability to point me toward hidden gems in distant cities. Fodor’s seems to think that the proliferation of these online travel sites “will only complement the branded content that professional experts offer.” We shall see.