I think if you could own the pre-trip organisation, and the post-trip sharing that would help cement it in the users mind. Most people dump the photos onto Facebook, but I imagine if there was a way to organise the data nicely or build a basic travelog from the trip data some people would be interested.
Interesting about the only non-ticket seller being Tripadvisor, I didn't realise it was that skewed toward trips sales.
Some of the problems in the article are what my startup has been dealing with for a while. We are basically trying to deal with the competence issue by letting people create travel logs of their adventures (both during and post trip)and use that to make customized travel suggestions for the future.
Users can basically share trips like the one below and we link up with most networks to import content from past trips. https://esplor.io/trips/k8g96my2j4vnm.
My friends in Mumbai, India are beta testing a beautiful travel journal Web app at http://serai.me/ (after a year of hard work) to share those beautiful trip photos with friends and they can contribute/comment so each can share his/her photos of the trip to a unified journal !
The pre-trip organisation bit is something We are working on as part of a long term goal of our new startup, Planning To (www.planning.to)
Being able to use the context of peoples existing plans and calendar/schedules to provide automated concierge type suggestions of what would suit them best in terms of travel (e.g flights, hotels etc)
Focused on B2B travel rather than vacations though for reasons others have put very well in here :)
To begin with though, we want to solve the problems inherent in calendaring/scheduling in the first place, and then build a technology platform from there that people can use to add context and automation to all sorts of use cases, travel being one of them.
Anyone interested in what we are doing would really appreciate feedback, good or bad :)
I know of one startup, Compathy(in Japan) that are working the other way around -that is, they're building a product that's first for post-trip sharing and then adding pre-trip planning elements/partnerships to it:
I think this is a good strategy since even a small population of traveling power-users who are keen on sharing their experiences can generate a lot of content and value for your site.
I've arrived at this conclusion in my mind regarding trip sharing or trip rating services - though for slightly different reasons.
Once someone creates a self-hosted, WordPress-like, trip sharing software, I'd be all over it. Like my blog, I'd like to know that my time spent writing and uploading photos is going to last longer than the typical lifespan of a startup.
Not wordpress, but currently building a digital travel journal in which you can share trips like this https://esplor.io/trips/k8g96my2j4vnm (press see timeline for the diary view)
Based on what you said, you seem like the user we would target. Any feedback would be brilliant!
Interesting about the only non-ticket seller being Tripadvisor, I didn't realise it was that skewed toward trips sales.