gtrot

gtrot makes it easy to share travel plans and experiences with friends.  Add your past trips and upcoming plans in seconds, post tips about your favorite destinations and attractions, and connect your Foursquare account to track and share the places you visit on each trip.  Easily see where your Facebook friends are going for the holidays, what they recommend doing, who will be nearby, and much more.  It's travel made simple and social.

gtrot took top prize at the 2009 Harvard College i3 Innovation Challenge. Rapid campus growth has drawn coverage from NYT & Boston Globe.

Zachary Smith graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College in 2009 with a degree in Economics.  He became an avid traveler during his exchange year at Oxford, when he visited a dozen European countries with just a backpack and guidebook.  His favorite travel experience was to Argentina, however, where you can still enjoy a five-star steak and Malbec pairing for under $30.  Zachary leads product development, partnerships, and strategy.

Brittany Laughlin graduated from NYU’s Stern School of Business in 2007 with a B.S. in Marketing and International Business.  As a program manager at American Express, she twice won the OPEN Innovation Competition for developing a mobile marketing platform and social networking strategy.  A fanatic traveler, Brittany has visited 36 countries across all 7 continents.  She joined gtrot in April 2010 to take the lead on marketing and user engagement.
 

Thousands of people are using gtrot.com to share travel plans and experiences with friends. Users can share travel itineraries in seconds and search trips by friend, destination, and/or date to see where friends have been, where they’re going, who will be nearby, and more. The recently launched Version 2.0 helps users share travel experiences in real-time, turning trip-related social media (tweets, check-ins, photos, etc.) into dynamic social travel guides.

gtrot is already amassing valuable user travel data, including trips to nearly 20,000 cities, which can be monetized through affiliates, bookings, and partnerships.

gtrot is focused on the young traveler market, including students, young professionals and avid travelers. Students alone spend $4.8 billion on Travel annually with 58% researching travel destinations online, 54% purchasing tickets online and 14% booking travel exclusively online. Events like Spring Break and Study Abroad provide opportunities for large scale social travel.

gtrot is already amassing valuable user data. The company has traction on 4 college campuses including 10% penetration at Harvard and Yale. They plan on continuing to reach the undergraduate and graduate market through their spring Campus program. gtrot owns user data shared on the site but closely connects with Facebook and Foursquare to deliver easy sharing for its users.