Dear Internet: You suck at helping people plan vacations. I touched on that point a bit in this PC Mag story about finding cheap flights online, but considering I just spent a month researching and doing price comparisons on travel sites, you’d think planning a vacation wouldn’t be a nightmare anymore.
There are two main problems as I see them (entrepreneurs, take note):
1). TripAdvisor is worthless. The hotel we finally picked to stay in has 500 user-submitted reviews on TA. 250 of them are 5-star reviews. 250 of them are 1-star reviews. I have no idea how to parse that kind of data into something I can use to pick a hotel. In fact, I read the most recent THIRTY reviews of the hotel we’re staying at and I have absolutely no idea what to expect. It’s either pristine or filthy, the staff is either super friendly or surly and mean, the food is either overprice or overpriced (they agreed on that at least).
If you’ve ever wondered why Yelp wants so much personal info from you, it’s to deal with this problem and lend some context to the reviews. As of now I’m left to guess whether Elliot from Albany has hotel tastes that align with mine, or whether I should pay more attention to Arnold from Sacramento.
2) There is no good travel search engine online that uses departure point as search criteria. If I live in New York, I want to search for last-minute deals from New York. Showing me an unbelievable vacation package that involves a flight from Miami to wherever I’m going really doesn’t help at all. This is especially true with searching for cruises. I live by two frickin’ cruise ports, and yet as far as I know there isn’t a single cruise line that lets you search its schedule by departure port.
When Corinne and I are shopping for a vacation, we really don’t care which tropical beach we’re going as long as we can get a good deal. I have to believe there are other people who feel that way too.
Startup idea: GetOuttaHere.com [[take it if it's not taken]]. You enter the name of the airport you’re leaving from, how much you’re willing to spend, and one vacation criteria (ie “beach” or “golf”), and GetOuttaHere spits out a list of matches for you to choose from. To narrow it down, you have two choices for travel dates: This Weekend, Next Weekend.
That’s it. Who wants to go into business?
