Tripwolf, an online travel guide that also offers some social features, has closed a $2.5 million funding round led by European travel publisher MairDumont Group along with investor Dieter von Holtzbrinck, a German entrepreneur who headed the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group for over 20 years.
Tripwolf offers comprehensive travel guides comprised of a mix of professionally written material and user submissions (the site lets members keep travel blogs, upload photos, and leave reviews for individual attractions). Since launching in June 2008 the site has grown to 15,000 members; a modest number but one that will probably grow as the site’s repository of information does.
Tripwolf is also planning to release an iPhone application soon that will include content from published guidebooks. Users will be able to chart out their interary online while still at home, and then can sync their customized travel guides to their phones so they don’t have to worry about data charges abroad. The site is also planning to release versions of the site in French, Spanish, and Italian over the next few months (it is currently available in English and German).
I’m still a little skeptical about Tripwolf – there’s already a plethora of travel information available on the web. But the site’s collection of content from professional guidebooks along with its partnership with the MairDumont Group (which Tripwolf says is the biggest European publisher of travel guides) may give it a leg up on other sites that are primarily user-generated.
Doesn’t look better than zipalong.
How are these travel-based sites still getting funding? It amazes me that people are still willing to put money into sites like this…
and that wolf is scary..
I really, REALLY hope Mozilla sues them for trademark infringement! That has to be the MOST unoriginal – directly plagiarized logo design I have ever seen. Uggg…..
Totally. I actually thought this was somehow owned by Firefox when I saw that. Not only the logo, but the name of the website too.
ditto.
tripwolf’s logo actually looks closer to the fennec logo than firefox….
but of course fennec is mozilla’s too.
That logo looks an awful lot like the FireFox logo.
Gotta gree with Zack above… how does a travel site manage to get $2.5M in this economy?
Maybe they plan to offer “virtual travel” or how to “travel locally”, seeing as the airline industry is facing its worst crisis in half a century.
It is very interesting news, it seems that this year will be very good …
It looks like there is a pretty substantial blogging component to tripwolf rather than just reviews.
You’d think 2.5 M would at least buy a designer who could show what you’re supposed to do on the site. Judging by the homepage I’d guess it’s just another “Web 2.0″ site about nothing. And judging from what few interior pages I could find, I think I’d be right.
i believe tripwolf could have better home page… everything is jus on home page which is not the type of website visitor would like to see. it needs to have proper strategy for user to use site and not to show what ever they have on home page.
I find that many of these trip planning websites just are not getting it right and make trip planning even more complicated/tedious.
Navigating the sites and trying to get value from them is like trying to squeeze water out of a stone.
We need sites that trip planning easy, not add hours or work/research to the process.
The above should read “We need sites that trip MAKE planning easy, not add hours or work/research to the process.”
I totally agree. TripWolf feels like doing homework. I’m more into the inspiration-minded sites out there like tripbase.com, or there are two new sites that are still in beta that I just discovered: joobili.com and tourdust.com.
There is competition, sites with a friendlier and more focused design like TripSay (http://www.tripsay.com) – it will be interesting to see how many of these sites can survive.
well done tripwolf .. congrats!
The mentioned (comment #1) zipalong.com looks much better than tripwolf for trip planning.
But I cant fathom why I would want to use an online trip planning tool in the first place? Even with a nice design of zipalong I cant see myself using it.
why most of comment seem to hate trip planning website.
at least they try their best to do their job.
some people may not like traveling while other worth it.
I don’t believe there is much “hate” aimed at the idea of trip planning sites, but rather the way that existing trip planning solutions have tackled the problem.
Online trip planners should save people time when planning their trip, not just provide people with (often useless) information in a poorly structured format with the ability to bookmark pages or locations into a “plan”.
Most of them should really be called “trip research” sites, not “trip planners”.
Hi-
I’m Maria, I work with tripwolf. We are actually in the process of going through a site redesign and would love your feedback. If you have any suggestion on how we can make the site more navigable and easier/more useful please let me know! maria [at] tripwolf [dot] com
Have a great weekend!
I understand that Fodors.com gets 2,500 postings A DAY in its forums – and they’ve been up for 10 years. There’s a lot of new trip planning sites vying for this type of organic activity.
Lycans on the travel I don’t like it.
I am a college student and love to travel, but have found Travel Wolf’s content to be geared to a slightly older crowd. Have any of you all visited http://www.myco...egeroadtrip.com ? I clicked on their Facebook book ad and was pretty impressed.
There are still a lot of innovations and money to be made in travel planning space. I still prefer guide books but most are way out of date. I think vivatravelguides.com have the secret sauce right, free online web 2.0 content plus print on demand books.
The site could definitely do with a remake with regards to the ease of finding places and things to do. Once cool site that is launching now is
AdventureDrop – Adventure Travel
Very User friendly for outdoor adventures.
Great news guys and keep up the good work!
Gino Goossens CEO | Trip Essentials. Plan and Go!
I especially love the photo highlights on the home page…..the Tripwolf team traveling the world …good use of their investors 2.5M!