Just when you thought there couldn’t be another trip planing tool on the market, out comes Virgin with VTravelled.com.To be fair, VTravelled is more than just a trip organizer; the site has articles, photos and destination tips all submitted by fellow users (VTravellers).
The first thing you will notice about the site is the design, I instantly liked the layout and presentation which comes across very modern and solid.The only drawback in this department was the inclusion of 3rd party ads, they really seem to detract from the great look they have going.
The destinations, photography and inspiration (articles) sections are all UGC and fairly straight forward, so I won’t go in to them in too much detail. The “Trip pod” and “Vtravellers” sections are, in my eyes, the main selling feature of the site. Creating an online community from nothing is a huge task but it looks like Virgin have hooked in to the ego of the early adopters to essentially become subject matter experts in their chosen destination. Trip pods are an easy way for these experts to create itineraries to their chosen destinations or for the average traveller to build and save an aspirational holiday. The VTraveller section lets average users meet up with like minded travellers (Based on the users past trip pods and site interactions) and see their suggestions, trip pods and articles.
I think Vtravelled.com has the right idea, travellers are normally quite quick to share their experiences with anyone who will listen and the ego factor is something that their future community will be built on. From my perspective, their challenges will be the same as any site that runs purely on UGC- Quality of information, initial quantity of information available etc., but Virgin will have to overcome the additional obstacle of competing in a market that already has some major players. Travellr.com, for exmaple, is an excellent crowd sourcing tool for travellers that’s intuitive and has the advantage of sourcing answers from users outside of a closed community (Twitter).
In summary, Vtravelled.com is great looking and has the potential to build a massive community. Some of the features are fairly standard but are implemented very well, others are more innovative but have some stiff competition. It will be interesting to see if users will be willing to abandon their existing networks for a closed community that’s still growing. For those travel writers looking for some exposure, Vtravelled are looking for writers that specialize in different destinations. To apply, click here.
3 Comments
Hi Graham,
Thanks for your review of vtravelled. It’s great to read that your impressions are positive overall, and I think your summary of the challenges ahead are pretty spot on.
It’s worth mentioning now that we’re just embarking on a fairly major review of where we are at the moment, what we’ve learned so far and how we can apply that to the next round of development. It’s been about five months since we launched and we have a load of really useful and insightful feedback to take forward. Exactly as you’ve picked up on in your post, Trip Pods and the vtravelled community are a main focus right now – for the very reasons you describe – so stay tuned for news on some major improvements in the coming months.
I would just like to slightly correct a couple of your points if I may, because I think it’s important when talking about UGC communities: you are totally right in your assertion that communities which run purely on UGC have to have quality information, and a large initial quantity of information in order to succeed. However, vtravelled is not actually a pure UGC site, and this is one of the areas where we feel we can differentiate ourselves from the crowded market. Our ‘Inspiration’ section comprises editorial articles that are commissioned, and are written by professional writers and travel journalists, and our destination guides are a mixture of user-contributed reviews and licensed 3rd party content (for the more ‘dry’ information such as passport/visa requirements, how to get there, etc). This spread of the factual info and the authoritative and expert knowledge from our writers sitting *alongside* UGC is what [we believe] makes us a more well-rounded site for online travel inspiration, and gives people a reason to come to us in the first place.
As you say, building a new community is a huge task – we’re under no illusions about this – but one thing we know for certain is that passionate travellers love to share… so we need to help them do that as easily as possible. Hopefully the improvements we’re working on today will help us to nurture one of the most engaged travel communities of tomorrow.
Maxine Sheppard
Editor – vtravelled.com
I have to say that I haven’t visited vtravelled.com yet, but what does the site offer that many of the other travel communities (trip planner) don’t? In other words what is the unique “selling” point to attract me to this community?
The web is swamped with websites (hey, I run 2 so I’m just as guilty!) and many of them are duplicates of others. Yes, travellers love to share their experience but seriously, how many communities do you want to join?
I am a member of a few forums, social networks and communities but I cannot remember the last time I was inclined to use any of them.
Hi Maxine, thank you for the comment, it was good to hear a little more about Vtravelled and where its going. You will have to let us know once those changes go live, would love to do an update on it
@Darren- Are you more a fan of communities that integrate with existing technology like facebook and Twitter?
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