The state of some travel startups and why some are missing the pain point

An interesting issue you raise, with which I wholeheartedly agree, is that "social discovery" isn't always the best answer to any question. For some categories it makes a lot of sense. For plenty more categories, it's a novelty at best, and the utility is questionable.<p>IMO, the best way to make travel "social" is to make <i>social</i> travel easier, viz., make organizing trips for groups easier. That's a legitimate problem to solve.

I think BART dominates all the other ways of getting between SF and SFO, but when I go to conferences it seems I'm the only USian to think that way.

Speaking of pain points: I often have a X days and $Y00 free, and want to take a trip somewhere overseas without particularly caring where I go (though I do care about price). It would be incredibly convenient if there were a service that lists all international destinations for a given departure date, sorted by price. Approximating this manually is quite difficult.

Terrific points! and all without even addressing the whole social travel problem (that traveling involves _places_ and places are where _people_ are).<p>Plenty of room for innovation in this space.