Got some vacation time coming but you don’t know where to go? A new site called TravelMuse wants to help.
TravelMuse, unlike sites such as Tripadvisor, is a meld of writer-driven, magazine-like editorial content “coupled with travel search, shopping and booking all in one place,” according to the company.
Co-founder and chief executive Kevin Fliess, a former executive at business software company SAP tells Travel Weekly that he has big “ambitions for the new site.” He wants his site to be a “household name” in travel planning.
TravelMuse is probably best described as an online concierge service. More than a travel planning site, Fliess says that inspiration comes in the editorial content, in the ability to immerse yourself into the content and have an armchair travel experience.
An “Inspiration Finder” on the site asks the users to specify their originating city, number of people traveling, budget, accommodation class, how many hours you want to travel, and the kinds of activities you want to be involved in. It produces a grid with options, price and related articles.
From editorial suggestions, users can jump from destination information to drill down to the level of individual hotels (some 90,000 are represented on the site), flight possibilities available, restaurants, all the way through to activity bookings.
Writers contribute to new content each week, and that content is integrated with travel destination guides that are also licensed from a third-party supplier, so the content will always have fresh articles for reference. Additionally, travelers can take information from other sites and include it in their portfolio of options and potential itineraries.
The site has about 200 domestic and international destinations that users can look through, which represent about 95 percent of the world’s most popular tourist destinations.
Booking your itinerary is handled by World Choice Travel, a Travelocity subsidiary.
At a time when more people are skipping their vacations and staying home, is this muse going to make it? We’ll see.
