Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

As a frequent traveler, I am awash in trip confirmations, hotels, and rental car info.  I often forget who I’ve told I am going away and who I’ve not.  TripIt aims to change all that.  By simply forwarding them your confirmation emails, they scan the doc and import in the pertinent information into their system and put it out there for you and anyone you give access to.  Talk about handy.

I’ve been using TripIt for a bit now and must say it works as promised.  It takes email forwarded from sites like Travelocity and Expedia as well as from the airlines directly and travel agents.  Entering in new trips was effortless and the data entered was spot on.  Even when JetBlue changed a flight time on me, I forwarded the email wondering if it would throw their system for a loop; nope, it changed my data just as I hoped.

My contacts could easily find my trip info and when i was on the road, accessing the data was a snap.  I enjoy the service but had some questions.  Luckily, Gregg Brockway, CEO and founder of TripIt was willing to answer my questions.  Gregg comes out of the travel industry and seems to know his stuff.

Gadgetell: Are there plans for a native iPhone/android app? 

The mobile app is nice, but having the data locally or at least the commands to get the data might be interesting. Yes, this is a feature request we occasionally see.  We’re exploring options to provide this.  Native apps are one solution.  We believe that browser based apps are the future of mobile and as browsers become more powerful, new solutions to this problem are also emerging which we are exploring.  Suffice to say, TripIt will provide offline access to your travel information in the near future.

Gadgetell:. How is the site going to make money?  Will we see ads at some point?

TripIt is a free service for travelers and plans to add online advertising in the future. However, our approach is likely to be more targeted by working with relevant brands and closely-related travel services, rather than standard banner advertising. We’re also looking into developing premium services for business travelers and corporate travel programs.

Gadgetell:. What is next for the company?

TripIt is growing quickly with great support from our users and the online community. We focused our first year on building out most of the core services that our users requested. Now we’re focusing on being an open platform and working more with partners. We currently support email confirmations from more than 250 booking sites, and have partnerships with Sabre VirtuallyThere (Sabre is one of the largest travel companies in the world)  and most recently LinkedIn. With LinkedIn, TripIt was one of a few selected applications to launch to their professional network last week, and in lets their users see where their connections are traveling. These are representative of the other partnerships we’re working on to help our travelers make it easy to organize and share their travel plans online. We’re happy to share more on that in the coming months.

Gadgetell: How secure is the info in TripIt’s hands, how secure is the email forwarding?  What precautions should users take?

TripIt takes security of information very seriously and we’re constantly reviewing industry best practices.  Email as a way of distributing information has been around for decades.  Once the information reaches TripIt, we make sure that our travelers have full control over who is able to access their travel information and how much of that information others are allowed to see.  For example, I think it’s very important that my wife see all my travel plans, including flight numbers, hotel addresses, etc.  However, for my broader network, I typically only want people to know my destination city and possibly the dates I’ll be there.  In some cases, I don’t want anyone to know my plans and I will mark these trips private.  TripIt gives travelers the ability to set general rules and update these on a trip by trip basis if needed.