Planning a Trip? Get Inspired by TravelMuse

Ed Forteau's picture

Half the fun of travel is in the planning, I think. To dream, research, read of experiences, find restaurants or places to stay - it's a joyful process for me. I was so pleased to find out an incredible travel planning resource, TravelMuse. TravelMuse offers help for travel planning, recommendations from others, a great community, and even a chance to win a trip to Waikiki! I was very happy to sit down and talk with Fiona Ashley, the Director of Marketing at TravelMuse, about the site, technology, giving back, and more. Here's what she had to say...

 

 

WE: Please tell us about your site, TravelMuse...

FA: TravelMuse is a website that helps people plan their trips and provides ideas and recommendations on where to stay and what to see and do. We offer tools to help organize all your research in an intuitive way and share it with co-travelers and friends.

 

 

WE: What was the genesis of your site?

FA: The idea came about when the founders of our site realized how hard it was to pull all their vacation ideas, details, and research together in one place while planning their own family vacations. After researching the various ways people planned trips, it became clear that it was a cumbersome process where people e-mailed links back and forth between co-travelers, built complex spreadsheets and printed out and stored information in a manila folder.  There was no easy solution to gather, organize and share travel research online. TravelMuse set out to make this process easy and fun. 

 

 

WE: You've got great technology - can you please share more about that?

FA: There are a number of great tools on TravelMuse that we’ve built:
The TravelMuse Bookmarker enables you to save pages, photos and text from any website and store it all in an online Trip folder. So, you could be browsing the New York Times and see a great article on Santa Fe that you’d like to utilize in planning your next vacation; the Bookmarker enables you to save it to your Trip on TravelMuse.

The TravelMuse Planner provides powerful mapping and scheduling tools so you can organize and view your saved items. It automatically shows popular attractions or allows you to search for other things to do on an interactive map.  The details of each saved item can be seen in a list view, and you can create a day-by-day itinerary in a schedule view.

We encourage people to invite friends to join and help plan Trips. As a collaborator, they can add comments and save additional items. Automatic notifications are sent when modifications are made to the Trip. We also introduced the ability to post items of your Trip to Facebook so you can get advice from friends. Comments made on Facebook are then automatically imported back to TravelMuse. 

 

Travelmuse

 

 

WE: What else can readers find on TravelMuse?

FA: TravelMuse has great destination, theme and activity information, where you can explore hotels, attractions, restaurants and more. Trips created by other members, guides and articles also provide useful suggestions and ideas. Any of these items on TravelMuse can be saved to your Trip.

 

 

WE: Who can see your trips?

FA: It depends on what privacy setting you choose for your Trip: “public” (anyone can see your trip, but not your notes or comments); “restricted” (friends can see your trip but not your notes or comments,  and collaborators can see and modify your trips and see notes and comments); or “private” (only you can see your trip).

 

 

WE: How do readers gain inspiration from your site?

FA: As well as the great content on TravelMuse, one of the more fun ways to find ideas is through the “Inspiration Finder.” Simply select your travel preferences, including activities and themes, your budget and preferred travel time, and then receive destination suggestions that match your criteria. 

 

 

WE: How do you suggest people give back while traveling?

FA: First of all, it’s important to travel responsibly wherever you go and, at the very least, understand the culture and traditions. While there is a growing interest in ecotourism, voluntourism and sustainable practices in travel, which we encourage, not everyone is willing to pay a premium for this type of travel. However, you can support suppliers who partner with local social outreach organizations and who instill a commitment to sustainable practices.

On TravelMuse you can read about how to participate in a family volutourism vacation, see recommendations of some voluntourism organizations to consider and read about a volutourism trip taken by teenagers. 

 

 

WE: Is there anything else you'd like to share with us?

FA: We really just want people to enjoy planning their trips in an intuitive and rewarding manner. TravelMuse makes the chaos of travel planning easy and fun by providing a central place to save, organize and share all your travel research for any destination.

Oh, and don’t forget to enter our contest to Win a Luxury Trip for 2 to Waikiki—just create a Trip on TravelMuse to enter!

 

 

WE: Thanks so very much, Fiona! We love TravelMuse  - have our fall trip to Ireland and Scotland on there! - and highly recommend it to our readers.

For more information, please see:

http://www.travelmuse.com