* Independent travel – only need lodging and transportation, no guides needed; this is typically a completely customized itinerary

* Private guided tour – customized tour with a guide, just for you and your party

* Escorted group tour – packaged guided tour in which you join a group of other travelers on a fixed departure date

* Vacation packages – similar to “Independent Travel” above but with fixed trip components (e.g. 5 days / 4 nights with certain flight + hotel + car rental), i.e. not customizable

For me, I personally have traveled using the first three types of arrangement using the travel companies which are Zicasso members.

When I travel at developed countries like Europe and Japan, I tend to do independent travel, with a sprinkling of half-day or full-day guided tours at particularly interesting cities. Example: When I had my honeymoon in Spain, our travel agent helped plan our entire itinerary and booked our hotels, rental car, and flights within Spain (Barcelona to Bilbao). We drove around northern Spain, ultimately getting to Santiago de Compostela where we got an excellent historian guide to give us a private half-day tour of the amazing old churches and architecture there.

On the other hand, when I travel in developing countries, I usually have a private guided tour arranged for me since it’s quite affordable. For example, last December, my wife and I traveled all throughout Laos as well as Cambodia, having a guide, car, and driver just for the two of us….traveling on an itinerary designed just for us by our tour operator. We had total flexibility on the schedule and on whatever we wanted to do or see.

One more example: A year ago, I took both an escorted group tour and a private guided tour in Peru. The first part of the trip was with an excellent small group tour covering the popular destinations of Machu Picchu, Cusco, Sacred Valley, etc. After that finished, I wanted to travel to some of the more remote areas of northern Peru and my tour operator arranged a private tour for me, with an excellent guide, to go see the amazing archaeological ruins in Trujillo and Chiclayo….in some parts, I was the only tourist!

On Zicasso, you describe your needs and travel arrangements you want. Our travel company partners then strive to make it happen for you. Zicasso is really about personalization and getting the help of professionals to make your trip planning hassle-free.

Brian K.Y. Tan
Founder and CEO
Zicasso

What online travel needs to get to the next level is a one-stop shopping tool that allows for customer self-designed trips to be assembled based on individual requirements and then return choices that can be further changed and personalized. That would be true dynamic packaging.

Some background first: On Tripology, a traveler client fills out a Trip Request form to describe the trip they’d like to take and Tripology matches it to their network of thousands of travel agents, notifying them and selling the Trip Request as a sales lead. The agents can then decide whether they want to purchase this lead. The first three who respond and pay for the lead get the client’s contact info. From there, everything happens offline — travel agents either call or email the client like they normally do, and all transactions happen offline.

Here are some important differences with Zicasso:

* Tripology allows ANY travel agent to join their network (claim to have over 6000 agents) while Zicasso spent thousands of hours over the past two years to carefully screen and invite only quality ones (we have over 100 quality companies) — we find that there is a HUGE difference between a good agent and a mediocre one. In other words, it’s about QUALITY of the travel companies/agents, not QUANTITY. Consumers might not know who is good or reputable and Zicasso has invested a lot of our time to do the homework for them. On the other hand, with Tripology, any three of the 6000 travel agents who purchased the lead first will get back to you with itineraries.

* Privacy issues. Tripology gives out a traveler’s contact info to any three travel agents who purchased it as a sales lead. Zicasso does NOT sell or give out a traveler’s contact info to any third parties, not even to our travel company partners. All itineraries are submitted online within Zicasso, so there is no need to disclose the traveler’s contact info, and we have built in an online messaging system (similar to Facebook’s Inbox approach) for communication between traveler and travel companies. Of course, whenever the traveler is comfortable with giving out their email or phone number to the travel company, that can be done so over the messaging system.

* Tripology appears to focus only on travel agents while Zicasso uses a mix of both tour operators and travel agents – again, it’s who we feel have the best expert knowledge for that destination (tour operators are the companies which actually operate and run the tours, so they are intimately familiar and specialized in their destination).

* Tripology does not offer any community features and, since transactions do not take place on their site, they cannot track and provide a rating system on the travel agents based on ACTUAL purchases, like Zicasso. Zicasso’s ratings and reviews will motivate our hand-picked travel companies to build a positive reputation with travelers and prospective customers.

* Tripology’s only online process is the initial step of filling out the Trip Request form — everything else is an offline experience, unlike Zicasso where itineraries, communications, and transactions all happen online.

I hope that clarifies the key differences.

Brian K.Y. Tan
Founder and CEO
Zicasso

P.S. By the way, we decided to open the site up for some early birds who want to check it out!

/sarcasm

FYI, TC regulars can always spot astro-turf Lisa, so before you get out all your marketing data that backs up the business case for zicasso, it would be wise to at least admit that you are an employee.

You guys should probably upgrade your cms before launch. You’re several security updates behind - lots of nasty people out there.

Best of luck.