Archives for "Offer Me a Trip"
Very Almost There: A Brief Preview..
..as we near the end of development and head towards launch of the Offer Me aTrip pilot.
When we began development of Offer Me aTrip, we wrote a number of challenges on the board, each of which had to be solved to make our new approach to on-line travel viable.
Here’s a list of those challenges, together with our approach to solving them together with a few preview images from the development shop:
Quick Launch Update (UPDATED)
Now that the New Year is firmly upon us we owe the world a quick update on our launch progress..
As of now, the development of Offer Me aTrip is pretty much wrapped up and complete. Although we can’t wait to unleash it on the world, we are still working on a number of ‘fit & finish’ items so that we can ensure the best user experience possible.
User experience is important to us, which is the reason why we would rather launch when ready instead of rushing to market. We’ll let you know as soon as we are ready, which should be within the next 1-2 weeks.
Meanwhile, back to work…
Some early preview images: (more coming soon)
Thank you Agents, You’re Awesome!
Offer Me a Trip – great travel offers, powered by amazing humans
On Monday we began searching for Travel Agents to power Offer Me a Trip. As in any new endeavour we were partly anxious about the potential response.
Had our market research been correct in identifying a demand for the service? Had we interpreted the market’s needs in the correct way? Had we done a good enough job in communicating our offer and our advantages?
Happily for us quite a few travel agents have proven the answers to those questions to be YES, and we are well the way towards our target quota of agents for the pilot launch in January.
We’ve also been hugely encouraged by the positive comments received in the process, and we absolutely can’t wait to launch so that we can repay you all by providing some customers for your services. We are sure they will be delighted with what you can offer.
So we just wanted to say a big
Thanks!
Counting Down to The OfferMeaTrip Pilot Launch
We are planning to launch our live pilot phase in January, and we’re looking for Travel Agents to participate.
(Wondering what Offer Me aTrip is? Read our introduction)
Many websites launch with a huge bang, and quickly fade to a whimper. The search engine Cuil was one such example of a heavily hyped launch that quickly faded. Why? because it didn’t doesn’t work properly.
Although our excitement is barely containable we are resisting the temptation to shout too loudly just yet and will begin with a pilot launch of Offer Me aTrip in January.
What is a Pilot Launch
Its a different word for beta, and we are hoping that unlike “beta” pilot doesn’t suggest that it’s half finished and that things won’t work.
What we do know is that despite our very best attention, hours of testing and reams of feedback, when real life customers and agents start using Offer Me aTrip in anger they will find things that they don’t like, things that don’t work quite as expected and probably a few things seem just plain odd. We are going to be surprised by quite a few things too, but hopefully not all negative.
We’ll start by advertising on-line, sending traffic to the site and listening carefully for feedback. Depending on what we find we’ll hold off on advertising for a day or so while we make changes and repeat the process with a higher volume of traffic. The only thing we know for certain about this process is that customers and agents will be relentlessly chased for feedback and there will be the odd feeling of devastation as what we thought were really cool features turn out to be complete rubbish.
Hopefully, several weeks of this process will result in a well honed site, ready for the big launch. Standby for more information in due course.
Want to be a part of it?
If you are a Travel Agent and would like to participate in our pilot and make the world a better place then check us out and sign up at OfferMeaTrip.com/agent
The Human Element in On-Line Travel
And why we think it’s important
In a world where the Internet is constantly innovating in order to automate the transfer and availability of knowledge, why are we investing in developing a web-site which requires human beings to deliver travel offers to customers? Isn’t the idea of Offer Me a Trip which relies on traditional Travel Agents somewhat incompatible with the Facebook age?
We don’t think so. Simply because, for the time being at leas,t human results will always be better.
Amazing as the web has become – possibilities such as scanning dozens of flight offers, reading the views of other travellers, getting direct recommendations on activities, meeting travellers with similar interests and many others were previously unimaginable – all this information in all its richness still needs triangulation and processing to place it into a useful context for each individual traveller.
Until either artificial intelligence takes a significant leap forwards, or individuals become willing to spend vast and increasing amounts of their time on travel research (although we recognise that many are and that Offer Me aTrip won’t be for them) then the human element in the form of a Travel Agent’s expertise will remain the fastest and most accurate way to determine the best way to make one of the biggest financial and time investments of a typical consumer’s year.
Web 1.0 was all about connecting information. Web 2.0 is about connecting people. Offer Me aTrip is about connecting consumers with human experts who provide value – a value in the form of Travel Agent expertise which has been somewhat overlooked in the rush to put travel online. That’s why we think the human element is important, and we can’t wait to put it back!
Image courtesy of victoriapeckham via flickr under a creative commons licence.
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