June 12, 2008: TravelMuse, Inc. announced today the public beta release of TravelMuse.com and the industry’s first “Inspiration Finder,” which offers consumers the ability to quickly discover destinations that match their personal preferences and needs. The TravelMuse Inspiration Finder is the first solution of its kind to consider multiple dimensions of travel information including budget, ages of travelers, maximum travel distance and preferred vacation activities to quickly identity best-fit destinations.
The TravelMuse Inspiration Finder integrates seamlessly with the powerful “TravelMuse Planner,” which allows consumers to easily bring all their trip research together in one place. Travelers can now research and save content from TravelMuse or other Web sites to the TravelMuse Planner and share it all securely with family and friends.
By combining these innovative tools with its existing travel guides, stunning photography and editorial content, TravelMuse establishes a position as the first and only online travel planning platform that brings together the entire travel planning experience onto a single site.
“Consumers are overwhelmed by the volume of travel content on the Web and are seeking relevancy and sense-making tools,” said Kevin Fliess, CEO and co-founder of TravelMuse, Inc. “Empowering people with information more relevant to them will continue to be the future trend in online travel planning, and matching this movement with easy-to-use, personalized travel planning tools will be paramount to the consumer’s successful planning experience.”
TravelMuse Inspiration Finder
The TravelMuse Inspiration Finder helps people make better travel decisions faster. It eliminates the time-consuming and complex tasks of manually searching for and comparing destinations and, as a result, reduces the effort of destination discovery from many hours to a matter of seconds. The TravelMuse Inspiration Finder makes the process simple for users by taking the following criteria into account simultaneously:
- Travel budget: TravelMuse recognizes that cost is a key consideration when deciding on a vacation destination.
- Number of hours from home airport: TravelMuse knows that distance matters depending on the duration of your trip or who is going on the trip.
- Desired vacation activities: TravelMuse appreciates how important it is to find a vacation spot that meets everyone’s interests.
- Number and ages of people traveling: TravelMuse understands the unique challenges of family travel and knows the most kid-friendly spots.
- Exact travel dates or time of year: TravelMuse recognizes that sometimes your travel dates are fixed and sometimes they are flexible.
From the TravelMuse Inspiration Finder search results, consumers can perform a side-by-side comparison of destinations by budget, travel time, themes and activities, and view sample packages with approximate pricing. No other travel planning site has offered an easier, more accurate way to get inspired.
TravelMuse Planner
The TravelMuse Planner helps consumers save time when planning trips. The solution provides a safe and secure environment that enables individuals to:
- Build a trip list of all the places they want to go.
- Research and plan all their trips from a single secure environment.
- Store trip research found on TravelMuse, such as hotel descriptions, city guides, attraction information, restaurant reviews and original articles written by travel experts.
- Store trip research found anywhere on the Web by using the simple TravelMuse Bookmarker.
- Share all this travel research securely with family and friends.
- Quickly and easily book air, car, hotel, packages and cruises when ready to purchase.
Comprehensive Travel Guides; Engaging Original Content
TravelMuse provides destination guides with more than 100,000 points of interest. In addition, the site includes original editorial content for families written by nearly 50 seasoned journalists and local experts.
TravelMuse members can also engage with travel communities by commenting and rating articles, hotels and restaurants, and by joining discussions on TravelMuse blogs.
“Our partnership spent a year looking for the right start-up to invest in within travel,” said Michael Kwatinetz, Founding General Partner of Azure Capital, a lead investor in TravelMuse. “We also saw a need for an online concierge in the travel space and were delighted to invest in TravelMuse. The planning tools and professional content found on TravelMuse.com are a big leap forward toward this vision of providing users with a better, more personalized travel planning experience.”
