I just launched the TripReportDatabase (http://www.tripreportdb.com). As the name implies, it's a site devoted to user-contributed trip reports. Registered users can post reports of their flights, hotel/lodging stays, and airport lounge visits. These reports are then linked to the site's very large database of over 5000 airports/virtually every airline/etc thus making it easy for other users to filter through the morass and find the reports of greatest interest. Definitely take a look. The site is very young (2 days old) and operating in beta mode but with time I hope it becomes a valuable resource for the travel community.
How does it work for trips involving several airlines/airports/hotels? It looks like filters assume each trip report is about a single airline/airport/hotel?
You're right - it's currently set up to only accept and display single segment trip reports. The user submitting the report would have create individual reports for each element of his trip. I agree this is a shortcoming. However, multi-segment trip reports is definitely something I can look into implementing. Thanks for the idea.
I'll implement that feature later today. Of course all of this is meaningless if I can't entice people to begin posting their trip reports on the site.
I agree it's all about marketing. At this point I'm hoping to build enough features to make the site valuable enough for users to want to post at.
I'll be launching a small contest this weekend to win either 2 United Club passes or 2 American Admirals Club passes. To win, simply post a trip report. Each trip report posted qualifies as one entry into the drawing - no limit on the number of entries. Your odds should be pretty good given how new the site is.
I'll take a look. Assuming we can just link to other posts, having a comprehensive spot to search for lounges at airports, particular hotels or cities/towns to get info would be valuable.
I think you should build a database of trip reports on other sites with links to those sites and the relevant keywords. That way you can build value without forcing people to input the data themselves. May get an offshore person on odesk.com to find the links and keywords to start with.
The idea of linking to existing trip reports is not a bad idea. The downside is that there's no way to search for keywords within an external report.
I imagine links might be the best I can do for those trip reports posted by established bloggers (ie One Mile at a Time) - I hope that I can build a site that's convenient enough for non-bloggers to want to post their trip reports at tripreportdb.com first. Although early, I think I'm making some good strides - namely, I'll host your photos (no need to use an third party photo hosting system) as well as neatly organize and catalog the basics of your report (airlines, airports, aircraft, etc).
I took your advice and have implemented a feature that allows users to link to existing trip reports published elsewhere on the web.
Thanks my suggestion was based on my difficulties finding reviews for specific routes and classes. For example I have a FCO - BKK flight in Thai First, when I search for that flight number and class I get tons of results from places like flyertalk.com and airlines.net with results that may not be for that flight or class. Having an aggregator of trip reports with good filtering would be helpful. It would be much easier to go to an aggregator and populate the flight number and class and see if there are reports for that specific itinerary.
I absolutely agree. The absence of an easy way to search for trip reports (particularly on specific flights) was the impetus for me creating the site. Now it's just a matter of getting people to contribute content.
