Taking off Travel blog

A few weeks ago, I got a message from one of my Twitter friends asking me to check out Activitravel, a newish travel site. I say ‘newish’ because it’s been running since 2009 (Update: the site was launched in October 2010).  Activitravel bills itself as an “online activity travel guide and community that helps active travelers identify and share information about the best places in the world to participate in various activities”. It was fonded by Oyvind and Trond Gronflaten from Norway, two brothers who are passionate about activity travel.  I decided to check it out.

Easy Sign Up

Plus point number one is that I could sign in via Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo, Google or MySpace and the site grabbed some basic profile information to start me off.  You can add your Facebook Page URL, Twitter name and site URL as well as some basic information about your site. You also have to state whether you represent a business.

The ‘Went’ List

Once you’ve done that, the next step is to start adding to your ‘went list’ – the list of places you have visited. This also populates a map with pins on the places you’ve been. One of the easiest ways to populate this list is to  click on the two drop down boxes (one for activities, the other for location) that you can find on every page of the site. Once you’ve selected one of each you get a list of the top activities (according to the community) and can add these to your list. Click on the blue die to rate and add. From there you can add more information, highlight top experiences, add photos and see what the experts have said.You can also add activities to your Wish List.

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While doing the rounds of some travel blogs, I came across PlanetEye. It aims to be a trip planning service with a difference, incorporating editorial content on destinations with useful information and help with bookings. I decided to put it to the test.

Planet Eye screenshot

Setup And First Steps

Getting set up was easy, but I hit my first snag when trying to create a travel pack for a forthcoming trip to Hollywood, Florida. You get the chance to add destinations, but of the handful of Hollywoods I was offered, I couldn’t tell which one was in Florida. So I created an empty travel pack, and added Florida as my destination, hoping that I would get the chance to specify later. Sure enough, I was able to find my exact destination on the map, but I couldn’t find a way to save it as part of my travel pack. Read more »