November 22, 2010
Vacation Relation links up similar travelers
Just-launched social travel startup brings together strangers with shared interests and ages
“Who will be at my vacation?”
That’s the question on the minds of Peter Sullivan and David Los, co-founders of Vacation Relation, a new social travel startup launching in beta Wednesday.
Unlike other social travel sites we’ve covered in the past, like Gogobot and gtrot, Vacation Relation is trying to be more than just another platform for sharing trip experiences with friends and family already connected to the user through their Facebook social graph. In the spirit of the spontaneity one encounters on the best trips, Sullivan and Los created Vacation Relation as a platform for people who want to connect with new people with similar interests in new and exciting places.
“What we do is connect you with the other people who will be there outside your existing social graph,” explains Sullivan. “We then connect you to those people via common interests.”
As an example, the co-founder suggested a surfer might be traveling to San Diego with his girlfriend, who doesn’t surf. The surfer could use Vacation Relation in this case to communicate with similarly-aged fellow surfers, either to discuss the best surf spots or to even plan a meetup. All exchanges take place through the user’s existing network--Facebook, as of now, or LinkedIn (support launching in about a week).
Here is the two-step process for creating a new vacation:
After the trip is created, travelers in the same area can socialize on Vacation Relation via a stream of updates.
The site has even incorporated an intelligent booking system, in tandem with a Booking.com partnership, that helps travelers find the accommodations where people of their age and interests will also be staying.
Launching globally today, the Stockholm, Sweden-based startup has already secured co-branding partnerships with the cities of Innsbruck, Austria; Atlantic City, New Jersey; Athens, Greece; and Oslo, Norway. On their official Web pages, each of these cities will place Vacation Relation-identifiable buttons that read, "See who will be at your Vacation! - powered by Vacation Relation,” and that redirect users to a unique URL on the travel site. The startup has similar partnerships with the country of Singapore as well as spring break planning site Student City.
In spite of Vacation Relation’s seeming promise, the startup is still completely bootstrapped and, naturally enough, actively seeking an angel investor or venture capital firm willing to get behind social travel.
(Co-founder Sullivan previously worked on another startup, Gadingo, which didn’t go too well. Take heed, budding entrepreneurs: “It's impossible to try to work during the day and do a startup. This time around I was 100% focused,” he said.)
Watch this video to learn more about Vacation Relation:
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Joined Vator on
Peter Sullivan
Joined Vator on
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