TripHub, a Seattle-based group oriented travel site, has closed its doors. We originally covered the company’s beta launch in September 2006, when we described it as a good way to help compile and centralize information for a group trip, but questioned if it was viable as a standalone business, especially against other players in the travel space like Yahoo Travel.
The company’s blog post blames the shutdown on a lack of funding, and alludes to a “different outcome” (probably an acquisition offer) that fell through:
“Certainly we made mistakes, and unfortunately we were impacted by factors beyond our control including the current economic environment and state of the travel industry. We came close to realizing a different outcome for our venture but, as the saying goes, close doesn’t count. At the end of the day, despite a well-received, market-leading product and early success with strategic partners such as Orbitz and Alaska Airlines, we simply ran out of money to continue executing on our vision.”
The company was founded in 2005 by Josh Herst, an early member of the Microsoft Expedia team. Last summer it scored a partnership with major travel planning site Orbitz, but apparently this wasn’t enough to help it break away from a host of competitors in the travel space which include TravelMuse and TripSay.
TripHub has been added to the Deadpool.
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sorry for the guys, hope you find other endavours which fulfill you guys…all the best
yea and always hoping not to be next;)
FACEBOOK IS DOWN!
Snape kills Dumbledore
eScrew owns you!
Reminder: Starting a Web 2.0 Travel company is an awesome way to write off your leisure trips as “business expenses”.
Sounds so much like the whinings of the web 1.0 dotcomers!
The title is very nice… haha! final destination..
Cheers, Nag
We launched http://travelmob.com the day before TripHub’s announcement. TravelMob will have the same core functionality, which is to give people a trip homepage, and manage RSVPs.
Here’s why we feel TravelMob will make it where TripHub didn’t.
-Integrated search and booking of air, hotel, car, and tours. We’ve baked this into the core of the site. Anytime you book a hotel, flight, or car through us, it goes into your trip’s itinerary. If a friend on the trip want’s to book the same flight or stay at the same hotel, there’s a “Fly with Me” or “Book Here” button next to your itinerary.
- Improved UI. We’ve really focused on making it easier to organize your slacker friends for a vacation. 100s of hours of real world testing on our slacker friends have paid off!
- Newsfeed. We’ve got a Facebook style newsfeed which keeps you updated on what people have booked, RSVPs, picture uploads, etc.
- Facebook/Open Social integration. In the coming months, we’ll be extending TravelMob to the FaceBook and Open Social platforms. You’ll be able to create a trip, invite friends, RSVP, from our site or your favorite social network.
- We walk the walk. Half of our team will be on the road taking an around the world trip starting in October. They’ll be using the site to plan, and will be blogging from the road.
You can see screenshots here http://www.slideshare.net/trav.....esentation
Let me know what you think of the site, adam@travelmob.com
http://www.quantcast.com/triphub.com
I think that says it all, really - if in two years, it *seems* like you’re only pulling a few K (maybe 20K? at best?) visitors / month, you shouldn’t be acquired unless there is some killer tech, AND it doesn’t make sense to keep pushing more $$$ into the fireplace.
Seriously, a “market leading” product doesn’t _matter_ what matters is passionate customers. They like it, they refer friends, they keep using it and eventually, you get to the “stratosphere”…however, if people don’t _use_ a product, you’re never getting off the runway in the first place.
now i have a good venue to benchmark the core of my travelsite based in the Philippines..
cheers,
Rodel
Please don’t ignore other sites!
http://www.cityquery.com/WebGu.....?dq=Cities
I think that it is safe to say that the social travel space is failing and no one else should attempt it. To succeed online in the travel world, you must be a powerful lead gen player for the airlines and that means huge worthwhile SEM campaigns and good technology. Getting a group of people together to help book a trip is not going to make the difference in generating a huge user base or produce revenue, and measuring conversions is very difficult. TripsAdvisor will be the only one to make out on top of the social travel space and even they are going to have to fight ahead.
I posted this same response at the tinycrunch.com post. sorry for the duplicate, but this had to come out.
I agree fully that to succeed in online travel you need to be built directly around a clear revenue model. Most of the social travel sites are indirect, i.e., assume that w/ sufficient members and pageviews the ad revenue will eventually arrive, and that they can build some sort of meta-search for affiliate revenue. But this becomes such a diluted user experience that this approach is failed from the start.
But I don’t agree that no one else should attempt it. Just add value.
Crash landed. Site goes BOOM. Wonder if we will see more travel sites closing their doors?
I was a short stay on the early team but this MUST go in for the record.
TripHub’s mission and concept is extremely viable. Who could recognize that better than a former Expedia exec? But the idea did not originate with its founder and he could not make up his mind on simple things such as the look-and-feel of its website or the productivity of his staff. He burrowed into details, micromanaged his people, waffled in his indecision and further drove his panic-driven sensibilities into further panic creating a vicious circle of indecision. He also demonstrated an inability to recognize the value of his resources in the fog of his own self doubt. He even haggled with staff regarding billable hours and would pit staff against each other by asking assessments of the others! Funny too how he always wore shoes that were three sizes too big (you’d notice by how the shoes bent when he walked). A little-big man with his wealth could certainly afford shoes that fit!
I wish the originator of this concept had the same opportunity as Herst to embark upon it. S/He would have done much better and no doubt that now that the concept is cast upon the wind, somebody else will. But the problem was not funding. Herst had immense wealth from Microsoft stock and Expedia and had even been a partner in a venture capital firm for four years before the 2006 announcement. That firm was one of TripHub’s primary investors.
I hate to see things like this go down, especially for the friends of mine who went down with it years after I had moved on. But the fact of the matter is that an arrogant, micromanaging, usurping, and personally insecure leader will always prove disastrous in business, even for a great product and concept as that TripHub represented. Now its potential will be someone else’s playing field.
I still wish it was the playing field for s/he that came up with the idea….
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