Travel Technology - Travel Planning for Frequent Travelers

Are you a frequent traveler frustrated with planning your trips efficiently? Your insight and feedback is invaluable to help us solve the problems with travel planning. Our startup is building an innovative travel planning solution and those who complete the survey will have an opportunity to help us validate our solution. In return, we will provide you with three months of service for free. The survey is five questions and it should only take one minute to complete. You can access the survey here: http://svy.mk/y2fn3i

Cross-Posting (posting the same thing in multiple forums) is not permitted per the rules of FlyerTalk.

As I posted in the other forum http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/online-travel-booking-bidding-agencies/1325174-travel-planning-frequent-travelers.html it would be nice if you can identify who you are, the name of your company, as well as how that information is to be used, and who it will be shared with.

Cross-Posting (posting the same thing in multiple forums) is not permitted per the rules of FlyerTalk.

As I posted in the other forum http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/online-travel-booking-bidding-agencies/1325174-travel-planning-frequent-travelers.html it would be nice if you can identify who you are, the name of your company, as well as how that information is to be used, and who it will be shared with.

Indeed, these surveys seem to be cropping up regularly these days on FT. Usually by someone claiming to be doing a dissertation.

Indeed, these surveys seem to be cropping up regularly these days on FT. Usually by someone claiming to be doing a dissertation.


Yes, but any studies being completed for, or by a student of, a University should have a clear cover page, outlining the purpose of the study, how information will be used, etc, and signed off upon by a university official, indicating the same was true.

In this instance, the OP discusses "our startup", and offering 3 months if a service for free. In addition, based on the questions, this appears to be a pay-per-use travel booking system. All these lead me to believe this survey is for a for-profit business entity, and not based on a academic survey.

We are working on a for-profit business but are just validating the idea now to see if there is a market. We have no revenue and aren't taking any transactions. The idea is to build a search engine for business travelers with the vision of making it a self-service platform that allows the traveler to have more control over their travel experience.

In a past life I worked for United Airlines managing the Sabre account. I have witnessed the market power that GDSs wield and how they use it to stifle innovation. When you look at how travel search is done today it is very inefficient. Google has demonstrated that 90 percent of click throughs come from the first 10 results yet we have to scroll through dozens of airfares in multiple searches to find what we want, even when we know exactly what we are looking for.

We are aiming to build a marketplace like amazon.com where travelers can build a customized itinerary directly with travel suppliers and not just buy airfares, hotels, car rentals, etc. The goal is to get the entire process down to one search in 10 minutes with no prior research. We want to display the most relevant itineraries for your trip that consider flight, ground transport options and accommodations with a total trip price (including all fees and ground transport options). Travelers spend a lot of time doing this already. I have to get on Google Maps to see if I can drive to the meeting from the airport in time if I take the morning flight or whether I have to fly in the night before and pay for a hotel.

These are obviously lofty goals and if it was easy to do someone would have probably done it already. However, we feel with the new technology coming out that this will be feasible very soon. I'm curious to know your thoughts on the whole idea.

The idea is to build a search engine for business travelers with the vision of making it a self-service platform that allows the traveler to have more control over their travel experience.

Sounds interesting. What do you propose offering that Kayak doesn't already?