Travis Katz and Ori Zaltzman started the website Gogobot, which is harnessing the power of social web to revolutionize travel. The website is growing rapidly with an added 1 million users in the past two months, bringing the total to 2 million. The site, unlike Yelp or TripAdvisor uses reccomendations from your friends in your own social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.
It states on the website, "Gogobot is harnessing the power of the social web to revolutionize travel. We believe the internet should deliver personalized, trusted experiences. We believe in creating experiences that consumers will love and want to tell their friends about. And we believe passionately that planning your trips and sharing your travel experiences should be fun, easy and social."
Instead of posting a status on your facebook or twitter feed asking for recommendations for your trip to Hong Kong, Gogobot can automate the process for you. The post a question area has attracted travel writers as power users, said the CEO Travis Katz to Business Insider. The website has staff travel writers who can offer recommendations and has recommendations on 10.5 million places in over 60,000 destiations.
The company has also announced their new iPhone app which includes new features such as the ability to book a hotel right away from the app and new "discover" and "explore" tabs to find restaurants, hotels and venues nearby. The site has become the number two social travel site, after Tripadvisor.
Kratz said to techcrunch.com that the app's purpose is to make Gogobot "even more social, as you can follow where your friends and those in your network are traveling and learn if they liked a destination or have specific tips."
The website hopes to be both a trip planning service and an interactive website where you can share photos and virtual postcards. It provides users with the ability to have a digital passport and to remember all the places they have visited.
