I need your input on a new travel platform

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Emile Victor

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Nov 7, 2013
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Hi everyone,

I'm writing to you from Toulouse, France - but I am an Aussie born and bred, and long time lurker on AFF.

I just unlocked a bit of money from my company to significantly change and build upon my website (which we are considering a prototype), AirDiary.net.

The plan right now is to take what we have, which is effectively FlightDiary with a different feature set, bake in automatic email imports for trips, in the same manner as TripIt/TripCase, plus some gamification, worldwide leaderboards, and full trip management. We *will* have iOS/Android apps, and a website.

We are planning on monetising this by creating a marketplace whereby airlines, hotels and car hire companies offer you rewards in the form of points or discounts in return for your data - this would be fully opt in, and without opting in you still have access to the full feature set.

The reason why we are thinking that this is the right time to do the last part is because there is a new law called the GDPR coming into force next year, which will potentially make the airlines' current methods of collecting and using this data illegal (the 20 million euros a year or 4% of yearly turnover kind of illegal) - even Australian airlines will be affected. From 2018 they will have to ask you to opt in, and explain exactly what they are doing with that information. I assume that most people will want something in return for this, so I want to build a framework around that.

So - getting to the point. I want your thoughts on what would be the most useful features that we don't yet have in these systems; if you had one app to rule them all, something even better than TripIt, that was an indispensable part of your travels, what features does it NEED to have? What are your thoughts on an opt-in system that shares anonymous data with your airline in return for points or discounts - and what should those points / discounts be per month/year, realistically?
 
The ability to import all flights from existing similar websites would be a pre-requisite for me even considering moving over.

I currently use jetitup.com which nicely pulls my flights from TripIt. Means I don't need to forward emails twice.
 
+1 to Daver6 comment re importing, and anything that can be done to simplify transition from other software if frequent flyers will engage.

@EmileVictor your name was familiar, I think I did some beta testing for pitot.io a few years ago and still follow your twitter.
 
hey, sounds interesting, Im working in digital marketing so the topic is very close to me.
What about:
- scanning boarding pass with your phone camera which will add the flight to the system automatically
- importing flights from mailbox would be great but I am not sure how many people will agree on that
- maybe getting some data from Facebook place activity? People post very often they trips
- there is a lot of websites which show images from a specific place (eg. flying close to mountains, Grand Canyon you name it) (based on Instagram hashtags or locations, whatever) but maybe it would be also interesting to see what people can see during their flights based on people's activity during flight but have no idea how to automate it :)
- maybe show approximate prices for some products on each airport? Eg. bottle of water, a bottle of Jack Daniels etc.

there are hips of options :)

Good luck!
 
+1 to Daver6 comment re importing, and anything that can be done to simplify transition from other software if frequent flyers will engage.

@EmileVictor your name was familiar, I think I did some beta testing for pitot.io a few years ago and still follow your twitter.

Same piece of software, different name!

@fortunately, I think that's a great idea; kind of like petrol prices - people could report the price in each airport for things like this. I am also planning on baking in live wait times for airports which are supported (quite a few offer APIs for this).
 
I am now closing this thread as it is clearly commercial and therefore breaches our TOS. See Terms of Service.

@Emile Victor - In future contact me prior to posting such requests. The content would be interesting to many of our members and I'm sure we could have arranged something had I been contacted prior to your post.
 
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