Group Travel Planning Websites: A Leader Emerging?
Written by Greg Saks (contact - e-mail) -- January 14th, 2008 | Share - Save - E-mailA number of websites designed to help consumers plan, book, and manage group trips have cropped up in the past couple of years. These include group booking tools such as Groople.com and GroupTravelPlanet.com, planning tools such as HomeAndAbroad.com and TripCart.com, and hybrid sites that combine a variety of features. It has been a rocky battle for these upstarts, many of which have not been able to either market themselves effectively to generate site traffic, or find the right product mix to sustain an active user base.
“I’m in!”, a site launched in early 2007, however, is carving out its place in the market and in the past few months has seen its site traffic surge. ImIn.com helps consumers and groups generate new trip ideas and then follows up by providing organization, planning, and networking tools for managing the trip. The mix of content and functionality is striking a chord with consumers and has led to ImIn.com attracting over 170,000 U.S. visitors to its site in December. The figure is a larger total than has ever been observed within the category and is 2X to 3X higher than more established brands like Groople and HotelPlanner.
ImIn.com is attracting a valuable and qualified travel audience to its site. Of the website traffic, 73% are measured as being “in-market” for traveling, as defined by actively visiting other online travel agency and travel supplier sites within the same month as visiting ImIn.com. Over 40% are in-market for a flight, 30% in-market for a hotel, and over a quarter are specifically in-market for a vacation package, a level that far exceeds the norm seen at travel websites. The audience also skews high for income levels, with nearly two-thirds in either the $60-100K or $100K+ income brackets.
A strong indicator for adoption of the ImIn.com product is active usage of a variety of the tools available on the site. Both the trip-idea content as well as the member tools for managing trips are generating activity among consumers. There is a near-equal level of activity for searching for trip ideas, viewing specific trip ideas, and clicking on “I’m in!” featured ideas. Illustrating the balance of activity on the site, there is also a heavy number of visits to register for membership, and visits to the existing member homepage.
With ImIn.com’s rapid growth in late 2007, it seems the hybrid approach of combining a wealth of travel content with rich social networking functionality is a winning model. Additionally, the consumers adopting the site are high-income, and often in-market for big-ticket vacation packages, making the site an attractive target for travel advertisers. It’s a site worth taking a look at.
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January 14th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
As of right now, your link to Imin.com is going to Tripcart.com, when it should go to, well, imin.com ;-)
January 14th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
Good catch… thanks for the heads up Eric.
January 14th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Those who are traveling or relocating to the United States might want to check out http://www.godaycare.com; a site that provides links to local resources of some US cities.
January 14th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Those who are traveling or relocating to the United States might want to check out http://www.gottarelocate.com; a site that provides links to local resources of some US cities.
January 14th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
I’ve been watching this one (http://www.imin.com) for a while. They are doing some interesting things. A refreshing approach in a sea of me too travel 2.0 sites. Glad to see they are doing well….
January 15th, 2008 at 8:20 am
Greg, Group Travel Planet did a switch-a-roo in branding to Group About in early ‘07 although both sites remain active. Do these figures represent traffic to the new site or the old one? Just curious.
January 15th, 2008 at 10:31 am
I took a quick look at what the site offers. The winning part of the site, I think, is the collection of user generated group trip ideas. The tools are fine, but the thing that hits you first is to search for a group trip idea matching your interests. Site is going to do pretty well.
January 16th, 2008 at 10:48 am
Jeff,
Figures above represent only grouptravelplanet.com. We don’t see much activity going to groupabout.com, but here are the stats if you want to look:
http://siteanalytics.compete.com/groupabout.com/?metric=uv
January 16th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Jeff,
ImIn, Groople, Hotel Planner are great sites. At the end of the day its not about visitors…its all about who looked and who booked!!!
http://www.mysitecast.blogspot.com
February 7th, 2008 at 8:33 am
Look at the Jan #’s for imin. Was dec a spike? seasonal?
http://www.HomeAndAbroad.com looks generally flat and http://www.TripCart.com seems to growing steadily.
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February 2nd, 2009 at 6:43 pm
Folks,
I am a business owner and have a boutique travel company. We offer a very unique product and are having challenges marketing it. We’ve created an adwords program, and have done some web optimization. We had a tremendous response from the press not to mention customers but are still not receiving the leads needed to spawn the growth we are looking for next year. Any ideas? Ken
March 12th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
Thanks for the great tips!
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April 15th, 2009 at 12:14 am
These group travel websites are totally unneeded. There is not going to be any winner.
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June 9th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
These group travel websites are very useful. Great blog and very informative.
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