Offering high quality content on more than 200,000 destinations around the globe, tripwolf is a new social travel guide and trip planner for independent travel enthusiasts. Surveys show that more than 70% of people get their travel recommendations from friends and family, so what could be better than signing up at tripwolf and start sharing your travel tips. Tripwolf features a wiki approach, where users easily can add places and update information.
An iPhone application is currently being developed, and in the near future, you will also be able to book flights, hotels, restaurants and car rentals through tripwolf. Users can also import their Facebook profile and friends.
To sign up at tripwolf’s private beta site before they officially launch, click here.
The tripwolf team in New York
For more information on the background and advantages of tripwolf, read my interview with globetrotter Sebastian Heinzel, founder of tripwolf.
Erica Johansson: When and how did you get the idea of starting tripwolf?
Sebastian Heinzel: The original idea is actually 8 or 10 years old. I was in college, and my best friend Alex (who is now the tripwolf COO) and I always wanted to do a trip around the world but had no money. So for months we toyed on and off with ideas about how to make other people pay for our trip. We actually came up with cool ideas: with my writing background and his tech background we wanted to be the first fully mobile travel content production company – and this was before blogging, wifi or even mobile phones were really around. But with our studies and our work and other responsibilities, we never really got around to doing it. Years later, wikipedia was already well known, the idea “wikitravel” popped back into our heads, but again we were to bound up in other things.
Last year finally, on a trip to Costa Rica, I talked with another friend of mine, the serial internet entrepreneur Markus Wagner, and he got on board and we decided to go ahead with it this time and build something bigger and better than all the travel sites that are around. So Alex and I run the company now together – he is based in Vienna, I am based in New York. We are really happy and amazed that we are doing this now, finally, at 30!
How has the response been so far?
The response so far has been really great and has far exceeded our expectations. TechCrunch and Mashable wrote about us, as you might have seen! Literally thousands of people signed up to be invited to the site in the next big round of invitations to our private beta phase. As for feedback, we are getting great grades! People especially like our design (and want to hire our designer!). We are happy about that because we wanted to set ourselves apart in that area. And we are still aiming higher: We will implement further significant design improvements soon.
What are the advantages of becoming a member at tripwolf?
The advantage is to get personal travel recommendations that really fit you. You can bring in your friends from other social networks like facebook and then see what kind of destinations, hotels, and restaurants they like. Surveys show that 70% of people get information from friends & family before they decide where they travel. That’s somehting that we reflect on tripwolf: you don’t get recommendations from a mass of users you don’t know but from your trusted sources. As a member you can also get personal advice from our knowledgable “trip gurus” that we have recruited for more than 100 destinations already. Or you can become a tripguru yourself!
One important note: tripwolf will be open for everybody in a few weeks, and users will be able to see all the content without being a member. When they sign up, they get all the benefits of interaction and personalization.
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that’s a cool site. i’ll check it out when it opens up to everyone.
oo im going to check that out when it comes. thanks for the heads up
remember, you can sign up now if you want to!
Thanks for the tip, I’ve checked it up already. The first impression were very good, I just liked the design at once. It gives a very fresh and modern impression.
I also noticed some features that I haven’t seen at other travel sites, so this looks promising.
So far I like it very much
Lifecruiser,
You’re welcome. I also liked the design at once and they do have some great features.