Proud to introduce Tripess.com version 1.0, improvements and new functionalities! And some insights…

The last few months, since our launch in February, we’ve been working on some mayor improvements. We listened very carefully to what our users came up with and we looked at the platform on we’re we would like to go in the near future. We defined a new and clear mission about what we want to achieve: Let you “Entering the world of serendipity”.

“Trip Essentials goes beyond search and entering the world of Serendipity (discovery). What’s the difference? Search is what you do when you’re looking for something. Serendipity is when something extraordinary that you didn’t know existed, or didn’t know how to ask for, finds you”.

I would also love to share some Analytics with you as well. Remember, we didn’t spend any money on (online) marketing! We’re amazed ourself’s that the website engages people and the amount of people using the website actively. Imagine if we would ever have enough money to spend on Online marketing .

An overview over one month*:

• 3.360 

Visitors

• 50.668 

Pageviews

• 15,08 

Pages per visitor

• 32,35% 

Bounc ratio

• 00:16:28 

Time on site

• 36,32% 

New visitors

*Feel free to publish these Analytics on you're blog. (more...)

Trip Essentials goes beyond search and entering the world of Serendipity (discovery). What’s the difference? Search is what you do when you’re looking for something. Serendipity is when something extraordinary that you didn’t know existed, or didn’t know how to ask for, finds you.

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.) discover, save and share your future plans with friends, family, colleagues and locals.

Once you saved your favorite accommodations or hotels you can; -sort, compare, forward, etc. Trip Essentials also marks coincidences, for example two other people also visited this hotel or four other people from your friends network will be in Barcelona at that time too.

Trip Essentials has offices in an old fire department (Blushuis) in Breda, The Netherlands.

The international team behind Trip Essentials is led by founder CEO Gino Goossens, CCO Sjoerd van Oosten, partner E-Sites and partner Moore Intelligence.com. Trip Essentials is privately funded by the international team.

Since our private beta release last Friday a lot of online and offline attention came over us. Some prominent blogs, magazines and newspapers approached us for interviews.

Frankwatching.nl is the number one weblog about Technology, Internet and Innovations in The Netherlands. They did a post about us.

We were even called ‘This year’s Dopplr’ on a weblog.

A journalist from the Amsterdam newspaper ‘Het Parool’ mentioned that “her Trip would have been completely different if she had used Trip Essentials and the Serendipity effect”.

Reisrevue announced us as a “Travel comparer with serendipity” and a welcome new website.

[update Saturday 14 February 2009] The #1 weblog DutchCowboys writes a post about Trip Essentials.

And many more…

Thank you all for your contributions and we hope we will meet your expectations.

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!

In September 2008 we started with the concept for a new start-up. The idea was clear; a world changing Intelligent Travel & Serendipity service that can be used by anyone to create order in the online travel chaos. Why? The hyper choice of Travel companies today, offers no suitable solution to present what’s relevant. The consumers live in a ‘web made world’ and have information needs to make sure they make the right decision! One of the most amazing things about the web is the shared volume of data and information that above all consumes and produces. And a large opportunity that Trip Essentials is capitalizing on is to leverage that data and to provide a better and more relevant Travel experience! So if you remember only two things; remember that we solving a critical problem by delivering Intelligence and Serendipity in a ‘web made Travel world’ and that we have a unique technology that delivers extraordinary convenience and satisfaction!

Every Start-up needs a brilliant team with the highest possible motivation and capacity to develop a world changing travel-web-service. Trip Essentials is developed and coordinated by 4 key-persons:

CEO, Co-Founder | Gino Goossens

CCO, Co-Founder | Sjoerd van Oosten

Developer, Creative designer | Bas van Kuijck

Deveoper | Wietse Ouwerkerk

We all love what we do and believe that our Intelligent Travel & Serendipity service is something that most people who Travel are going to need sooner or later. Now you know who we are and why we started Trip Essentials.