I like http://www.wejustgotback.com for planning family trips (excellent attention given to all the elements families need to know about) and, to Jen’s point, there is an editorial team that’s guiding the content though there are plenty of reader tips and submissions on the site, too. I like http://www.groople.com for planning larger group getaways (like a recent family reunion where people were coming from all over).

We also appreciate your comments:
contact (at) mp3travel.com

I like Jeremy’s framework, but what Gil hints at, from a position of being in the know — is that Wikipedia is an exception that frames too much of what the popular prospects for wikis are. They start as a blank page, so creativity and moderation determine the community outcome. They do inherently reveal group voice. But conversations can go in many directions, together.

Also, there are some niches within and at the edges of travel, like wikioutdoors.com

Wikis are great for getting a large amount of well organized information. Often it is “fact” like wikipedia, but it can also be opinion, like “hotels that are pet friendly”, or “the best spas” where everyone can agree. We think it’s a fun area that can grow in many directions, and we hope your readers will help us. Personally, I would love to see a list of hotels that have Wifi!!

Feel free to contact me at gilpenchina -at yahoo.com as I welcome both critiques, suggestions, or just dis-agreement. I’m passionate about travel and happy to talk to anyone else who has a passion on the subject.

To Tim’s point above, the only way to solve this problem is with a
combination of editorialized content and a trusted community of
like-minded travelers.

One useful framework for thinking about this is alluded to by Sam:

- “one right answer” content (definitions, encyclopedias, lyrics to a song, plot summaries to a movie, factual information about a city etc)
- “many right answer” content (recipes are the canonical example here – both my meatball recipe and yours are “right” in that they both if followed will produce meatballs)
- “no right answer” content (op ed etc)

These end up matching well to three popular mechanisms of UGC:

- wikis (characterized by no identifiable authorship, group agreement drives convergence to a single answer)
– UGC databases (characterized by ratings, rankings, tagging and identifiable authors so that the best meatball recipes bubble to the top, and the best cooks can be identified by aggregating across their recipes)
- blogs and messageboards (characterized by identifyable authorship and robust expression of opinion )

So how does this work for travel? You have to break it down. Some elements of travel will work well for wikis (population of a city, address of the Youth Hostel, drinking age) some will work well for UGC databases (hotel reviews) and some for blogs and messageboards (what are the “top ten” sights, what did I do on my trip to budapest etc)

I’ve found this framework to be useful in thinking about most forms of UGC

Wikis are excellent for gathering information on subjects where there is a *single* “right” answer, such as an address, opening/closing times, and an unopinionated description of a product, or in this case, a travel destination and related things to do.
Where wikis end and reviews sites begin is when there are *many* “right” answers. For example, if I’m 18 and backpacking in Europe on a shoestring, why should I want to read a hotel recommendation left by a 60 year old with an $500/day budget?

Most travel guides don’t focus on the kinds of things I’m interested in. Find a good Jazz club or pub in Fromer’s, or good hole-in-the-wall places. I’d rather get a view of a city from people my age, with my interests, that have been there, directly – not through an editor, who might only know about a place through it’s PR staff. This is, in my opinion, EXACTLY what a wiki should be used for.

http://www.trip....com/TravelHome

Alexa.com traffic rank in the 300’s, and according to comscore, TripAdvisor is one of the largest travel websites.

For example … the Boston set of Inside pages are here ….
http://www.trip...tts:Inside.html

(Disclaimer … I’m a TA product manager)

It has a rating of 7,118 on Alexa, so its traffic isn’t small by any means.

some of them (southampton open guide etc) use google maps to help users visualise where the places are..?

But isn’t that exactly the reason why Wikis are an awesome ideas for travel guides? People who don’t write a place can note problems they found, while people who liked it can point out advantages. This allows you to form your own opinion instead of hoping that the single person who wrote it has a taste similar to yours.

You can even look through discussions about and past changes to an entry to figure out what people who think like you thought of a place.

I was having this discussion with a friend of mine recently who partners me in online travel guide project. Travel is all about individual opinion, the reasons wh yI can’t wait to go back may be exact reasons other people can’t stand the place. For that pretty crucial reason I don’t think wikis are a sensible way to go about forming a collective travel guide.

A community based travel guide should aim to gather as many opinions as possible from it users and allow readers to filter the content they wish to read on the basis of the reviewers they think they are similarly alined with.

Furthermore doies anyone feel motivated to travel when looking at the bland grey backgrounds of a wiki? I think not. The sites needs to remind me of what it is to be away traveling, not staring at the three walls of my cube.