I used to go to travel agents, and loved the speed at which they could construct the most complex of itineraries but disliked the inconvenience of visiting their building at their convenience (9am-5:30pm Mon-Sat) and the lack of specialist knowledge about the place I was visiting.<p>Then I tried specialist tours, and loved everything except the control over the itinerary once there.<p>Then came the internet and it made the convenience work, and it allowed us to built our own complex itineraries. But now we faced hours of research to find what is worth visiting, and what isn't.<p>Recently I moved back to travel agents but now favour specialist ones.<p>Specifically, I use companies like this: <a href="http://www.journeylatinamerica.co.uk/" rel="nofollow">http://www.journeylatinamerica.co.uk/</a> where every member of staff have lived or visited the destinations they serve.<p>I go in, sit down, and if I ask about Chile and the person in front of me hasn't been they go fetch a couple of people who have been.<p>I guess my question is: Have you just invented the specialist travel agent "on the internet" and "with the crowd"? For how is this different from anything that anyone could've done already?<p>That cynicism aside, I do think there's a big potential in being the gateway to such specialism as it can be hard to find the best agents for a given place.
<a href="http://www.voyando.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.voyando.com</a> is in a similar space but with a different proposition (less focused on info, more on the transaction).<p>It's in private beta atm.
Not sure how big the market would be. I feel that a lot of people can get enough "knowledge" from <a href="http://wikitravel.org/" rel="nofollow">http://wikitravel.org/</a>
A bit off topic, but this is the first site I've seen to the use the .travel extension in quite some time.<p>Why not just pick up the planmytravel.com?
really like the idea. good stuff guys!<p>just want to know how do I choose who is a good travel planner? for example if her profile states she is a food + wine expert, can I get a glimpse of how does she think about them? like links to their blog posts etc?