devontivona

Hey everyone, I don't want to sound spammy at all, but we're working to build a really great alternative to WorldMate and TripIt at Pana.

We just launched the public beta of Pana Free this month. It is currently available for iOS, with web coming in the next few weeks.

When we're done, we will have complete feature parity with TripIt Pro and WorldMate Gold (trip alerts, itinerary sharing, etc.) for free.

Since everyone here is a pretty frequent traveler, we'd love your feedback. We're actively developing the product, so we're very open to hear what works for you and what doesn't.

fortidav

I used WorldMate for years and just downloaded Pana. I don't get the thing about trying to get my email password... seriously this over the top- who would give his business email and password to some Beta app!!

feival

Honestly I am not comfortable giving anybody or any app my email ID and password.

RTW1

I think it's a serious design flaw that the preferred option is to have full access to an e-mail account.... who does that?

feival

Ok but I've seen they have a manual import option too (and anyway they don't support Yahoo - and with Yahoo heavily tightening up security I doubt they will ever get access). From the FAQ:

"Forwarding emails to Pana

If you'd prefer not to connect your email directly with Pana you can still use the service by forwarding your booking confirmation emails to [email protected]."

RTW1

They seem to have... but the preference for full access disqualifies the app for me without even trying it.

BradnerBoy

iOS only...is that still a thing?

dgtsf

There's also a new entrant in the space called Pana. I'm not enthused from first attempts to use it.

I created the simplest of all possible itineraries a few days ago. I had a one night trip. No airplane (driving my own car), staying one night at a Marriott Fairfield Inn out in California's Central Valley. One person. One confirmation number. Standard hotel. That's it. It's as easy an itinerary as one will ever see. I forwarded the Marriott confirmation email to Pana's email processing address, and nearly two days later it fired back an email to me saying it couldn't find any reservation/travel information in the forwarded email.

So... Not only could Pana not read a standard confirmation email from the single largest hotel chain on the face of the planet, but it took a day and a half to tell me that.

On the flipside, Pana told me it send my confirmation email to a human to input into my Pana itinerary manually. I haven't bothered to check if they ever got around to it since Pana was already a colossal failure at this point. You shouldn't need human intervention to process the most basic of hotel confirmations, nor do I have the patience or time to wait several days for their whole AI/human system to work itself out.


Just some thoughts from a saddened Worldmate user of many, many years. I'm 99% sure I'm going to switch back to Kayak at this point. TripIt lost me years ago. Google Trips was a non-starter for a variety of reasons. And I wanted to keep an open mind for Pana, but that didn't work out so well. So Kayak it is...


dt

dgtsf

FYI, my post immediately above was originally posted in a thread about Worldmate's sudden shut down but the moderators moved it over here.

dgtsf

OP,

I'm pleased to see you looking for feedback on here. It's not spammy at all, IMHO. I think you're more likely to find your target customers here than perhaps anywhere.

A few thoughts:

1. Username and password access to an email account is an absolute, non-negotiable, non-starter. Sorry, it will never, ever happen. FWIW, I've done a wide range of cybersecurity analysis and policy work over the years. It will never happen, least of all with a beta app that is brand new, unproven, and published by a developer no body knows. That's not a knock or critique against you, it's just too risky of a proposition. We know absolutely nothing about how your app or servers handle data, what the humans who work for you and work your systems have access to, their background checks, etc. But even if you offered reasonable assurances there, it's still too risky. For how many years has Yahoo said their data is secured? Sorry...don't trust anyone. You may find a lot of uneducated users who don't think twice about it, but they certainly should. Non-starter. If your app can do authentication through Google, Microsoft, etc., it might be worth considering. But otherwise, won't even consider it.

2. Even if I were willing to provide credentialed access to my email, personally, I want to forward my travel details manually. That's probably just me. I know I'm a control freak, it's okay, you can say it. I never extended access to WorldMate, TripIt, or any of the other travel apps I used. I just didn't trust any of them to not miss a confirmation email and leave me on the road hunting for details that should be in my itinerary but aren't because an automated email service missed something or didn't recognize a confirmation email correctly.

3. See my feedback in my post immediately above for how Pana failed to recognize a standard hotel confirmation. I'll usually be willing to try a service again when it's fixed its flaws, but unfortunately, Pana is off to a bad start.

4. iOS only works for me for right now, but it won't for long. I'm likely moving to a Google phone in the next several months.

5. I have not bee able to login to http://app.pana.com. The sign in link comes up, enter my email, and it fails every time with an error (XMLHttpRequest failed: "Unable to connect to the Parse API")

5.a. The iOS app hangs at log in. Rebooting didn't help. Not a good start.

5.b. If there's no web UI for accessing and managing my itinerary data, it's a non-starter. I don't want to work only in an app on a mobile device. I spend most of my time on a big screen unless I'm on the road, but once I hit the road, I'm not planning trips -- I'm moving about, checking in and out, dealing with problems that come up. I need both a web UI (or desktop app so long as you offer it on both Windows and Mac) and a mobile app.

6. Don't be evil. Don't be CWT. They killed WorldMate and offered no ability to export data. Please be open. Please allow sharing, archiving, and backing up our itinerary data.

7. One thing that would be awesome: process cancellation emails forwarded to your email processor. Kayak and TripIt don't do this, nor did Worldmate. But if I send a cancellation confirmation, your service should find where that confirmation is stored in all my active trips and remove it.

8. I'm greatly encouraged by an intelligent computer-based service with humans to right its inevitable misfires. Remains to be seen how well this works, but honestly, the humans should only have to step in for more than just basic things. Pana failed to import a basic Marriott hotel confirmation. That's expensive use of your humans, and a time delay I can't afford as a relentless traveler.

9. Out of curiosity, what do your travel agents do that I can't get through either, say, the Amex Travel or Amex Platinum concierge desk? Is the value proposition solely that there's an automated AI bot to help with the process?


Just my two cents FWIW.


Don't get me wrong. I despise TripIt at this point, and welcome any new entrant who can take this disheveled messed up travel app industry and make it easier for those of us who travel. There's much broken to the travel process, and it isn't just the UX. I'm excited to have a new player on the scene, and from a variety of experiences, I know well just how challenging these services can be to build. WorldMate changed the game when it first came out, but CWT has seen to it that they never play again for anyone but those who book travel through CWT agents. TripIt was good until Concur stopped caring about it. And Sabre doesn't seem to care much about TripCase, which seemingly never took off. That leaves you and Kayak. Kayak works well, though I have my issues with it. But this is till an industry that has huge, massive room for improvement. I wish you the best and hope you listen to the market and what it needs.

Feel free to reach out direct if you want any clarification on my opinions above.

dt

NomadNick

This was my initial experience as well. I was able to eventually get it to take the registration after quitting the app and restarting a few times. But definitely want to get that fixed.

I then tried to use it with a very simple Southwest booking, forwarding the email to the Pana address. It came back that it could not read the email. So it failed on what seems like a fairly basic task for any travel manager.

I really hope that the Pana team is able to put some serious effort into this. The design looks great and seems promising if they can execute. I have been with TripIt for as long as I can remember, but it seems like they are not interested in updating it much at this point. Certainly looking for an alternative, but Pana doesn't seem very close to that at this point.

Beavis1960

Would be very interesting if you can provide a feature to "import" completed WM trip and TI info into Pana. That's what I liked most about WM. I could go back and review old trips I had taken to know where I was when. Thanks. Good luck with the launch of Pana