As you might know, we want to integrate convenience and be able to communicate with our users. No matter were you are. So we created a Facebook group for you to show that you support us and tell your friends and family about us.

Through our blog, group and newsletter we would like to start the conversations with you on how we can make tripEss.com better, faster, more beautiful and functional for you.

These communication channels are also going to be where we will announce new features, developments, start-up hick-ups, fix problems etc. And we will talk about our philosophy behind tripEss.com, why we started the services and how we want to change the world with this Intelligent Travel service.

About: Trip Essentials (TripEss) is an online Travel service designed to make your Travel experience more active and stimulating. Trip Essentials Travel service can help you, while you explore different Travel websites (e.a. lastminute, expedia, booking, hotels etc.), save and share your future plans with friends, family, colleagues and locals.

What are you waiting for? Join us at Facebook!

Yesterday we received some great news! We are nominated by: ReisRevue and Green Travel Foundation for a Green Feather. The Travel Feather elections are one of the highest nominations a Travel initiative/company can receive in The Netherlands. We are nominated together with some of the biggest Travel companies in the world such as: KLM, TUI Travel PLC, OAD, Kuoni, etc. So we are really horned to receive a nomination for our contribution to create more ‘green awareness’ among Travelers across the globe.

Why? What did we do to deserve such a prestigious nomination?

There are two reasons why we got nominated:

1.) When people are using the service of Trip Essentials and add the favorite accommodations/ hotels to a tripset, we give CO2 emission kilogram information for different kind of ways people could travel; -by foot, bus, train, car or airplane.  This creates awareness and let people think about the way they could travel to their next destination. Also we keep track on how many miles/ kilometers people traveled and what the total CO2 emission is for different travel types.
2.) We give tips to business travelers to become more efficient to plan their business trips by recommending appointments in the same city. Travel & Serendipity creates this effect because it marks coincidences and shows you who lives or will be in that city the same time you will be there to. This way we create more awareness and the opportunity to save fuel, minimize CO2 emission and even to be more efficient in planning your next trip. In the near future we also should be able to tell who is the most environmentally aware travel organization in different ways of traveling around the globe (KLM, Oad, TUI, Expedia, Lastminute.com, …). Maybe even create our own award to give each year to the most environmentally aware travel organization in the world. So which Travel organization is able to sell the best mix of different ways to travel to a destination?

The award show is this Tuesday the 13th in Utrecht during the holiday grant profession day. We sure hope we stand a chance! Wish us luck!

Last Friday, 2 January 2009 we achieved a goal; our private beta version was finished and we launched it! Currently were testing all functionalities and aggregators to make sure that small problems are being solved before the ‘public private beta’ goes live. We have a select group of critics and trip.Ess enthusiasts who will receive a private beta invite. If we stay on schedule we expect to be sending the first private beta invites within two weeks.

Celebrating our moment at Trip Essentials office in Breda, The Netherlands
You can find more pictures about Trip Essentials here.

At this moment were pitching Trip Essentials to (private) investors/ venture capitalists to develop and market trip.Ess more and more the coming years. Investors who are intersted can always send me and e-mail (ginogoossens[at]gmail[dot]com) or call me at +31 (0)6-24115440. Will continue giving updates on developments as well; -things were struggling with as a start-up and how we solved and faced problems the last year and coming years.

Were getting a lot of support and most people we talk to about trip.Ess are really enthusiastic about the service and can’t wait to start using it. Well same here! We can’t wait to introduce trip.Ess to you!