TripCreator: Trip Planning Beyond your Flight
As airlines are vying with each other and with other travel operators to get a larger piece of travelers wallets through ancillary offerings, the approach of this Icelandic startup will surely come in handy.
In fact, it has already caught the attention of Icelandair, with whom TripCreator recently signed a partnership agreement.
TripCreator aims to make simple what in practice isn't so much: planning for multi-stage trips involving a number of different operators, options and schedules
The system operates like a hub for all your planning: transporation, accommodation, activities...
It is smart enough to know what is feasible along your route, to the point it can suggest you things to do or see along a route or show you accommodation options taht fit into your itinerary profile.
You can also share with other co-travelers and get all bookings, whether for transportation, accommodation, activities, aggregated in one final bill that you can pay with one click.
Let's say you are planning an itinerary through Europe, starting in Paris, then to Zurich and ending in Nice...
At every step you can search accomodation and activities options. TripCreator knows what are your schedules, so it will suggest those that are feasible within your timeframe, location and other filters you set
Quite an interesting feature for those on multi-city itineraries: Tripcreator will suggest you things to see or to do along your route
Another practical feature besides the calendar, shareable view : pay everything in one go
To be fair, this is not the first time that someone tries to fix itinerary planning, but there are two factors that are in Tripcreator's favour.
The first one is the ease of use: starting from a number of locations in the map (start, destination and, if needed, intermediate points) you can build a whole schedule, complete with accommodation bookings and activities in a very visual user-friendly way.
But perhaps the most important factor for the ultimate success of this project is its focus on the B2B market. Rather than trying to get individual users adopt the service (always a challenge in a market saturated with travel apps of all sorts), the Icelandic firm has opted to offer it as a value added service for other companies, such as airlines, that have already a mass of users actively planning trips.
As active travelers that always try to fit as much as possible into every trip, form here we can only wish them success!