A 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.

Greg is Director of Compete’s Travel Practice. He is a sought after speaker at industry conferences and is quoted frequently in leading travel and general business publications.

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  1. Eric Fields

    As of right now, your link to Imin.com is going to Tripcart.com, when it should go to, well, imin.com ;-)

  2. Greg

    Good catch… thanks for the heads up Eric.

  3. James

    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.

  4. James

    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.

  5. David

    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….

  6. Jeff Gayduk

    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.

  7. Kango Ling

    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.

  8. Greg

    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

  9. Tom

    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

  10. ec

    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.

  11. Gonemon

    How are you !
    I am Gonemon from Japan.

    I’ve come to your site
    from google blog.

    Nice to be able to contact you.
    What a fantastic happening
    this is !

    I want to go around the world ,
    if I have enough time and money .

    But please
    come to Japan to see the
    beautiful seasonal scenery
    and to try
    the seasonal delicious dishes.

    I made a link from my blog.

    If you don’t mind
    please link to my blog.

    my name : Gonemon

    my blog title:
    Japan travel special scenery
    seasonal taste flavor food dish

    my blog URL : http://tripeat.blogspot.com/

    Thank you.
    Then see you again.


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