Groople has launched travel and social networking tool, offering an integrated solution for the challenges of planning and booking group travel. (8/24/2007)
The tool GroopVine will allow users to create their own personalised trip page to plan, create, share, shop and buy travel with their entire group’s input every step of the way. Providing helpful tools from event schedules and suggested itineraries to RSS feeds and online surveys, GroopVine proposes to make group travel planning fun, collaborative and easy.
Mike Stacy, Chief Executive Officer, Groople said with GroopVine, group leaders can easily communicate online using helpful tools including event schedules, suggested itineraries from similar groups and online surveys. He said, “GroopVine creates an instant travel community for every group.”
The company says GroopVine is the first travel industry tool to offer customers one place to plan, share, shop and book trips.
The tool helps in researching and booking. While researching for a trip, one can search by category (in 13 different categories); Clone trip itineraries (look at other trips or search them for ideas as a starting point in building their own); Construct trip itineraries and schedules of events (Groople’s event scheduler supports recommending, voting and commenting, in addition to organising the final itinerary).
Users can create a personalised URL for the trip that can be tailored with a header, colour scheme, drag and drop option for redesigning page items, etc; Add and edit sections from a personalised web page, including weather forecasts, forum discussions, photos and videos and activities; Invite guests to join the trip, add ideas, photos or video to the personalised web page; Have a threaded discussion where each member of the group can add his or her own comments; Create a poll to determine where or when the group can go, or on any topic on which the group leader would like to get input; Freely add more information on the page (using wiki) and receive RSS support for web page updates; Upload photos and short videos; Keep tabs on who’s attending their group trip and who’s already paid; Easily share information with the entire group about hotel, airline and rental car options; Review hotel information and amenities together.
While booking trip, users are allowed to make reservations for hotel, air or car and have each guest pay for them individually; Import travel reservations made elsewhere; Hotel reservations made on Groople are automatically integrated into the group trip page.
