Why the sudden explosion in travel related search engines / search sites?

I think there’s a general sense that the “traditional” travel sites can be somewhat overwhelming, and additionally some users are looking for more of a “discovery” element.  If you’re just trying to get feedback on a specific place like the Hotel Bassano in Paris, then the major hotel review sites great for that.  But many people we talk to say there’s no good website where it’s easy to discover new places to travel to.  Some sites have a “things to do” section for many cities, but these lists are often commercialized or they can suffer from a “made by a committee” flavor.  Generally people want advice from people “like them” and often don’t have an idea for exactly where they want to go, eat, or stay at the time they start researching their trip. And many of the major travel review sites don’t really address that part of trip-planning.

The more traditional sites also haven’t embraced the explosion of social networking or offered a way to get travel well-integrated into that space. But travel is highly social and we find that people really like being able to share their travel experiences easily with Facebook friends or Twitter followers as well as the option to ask their own social network for travel advice with a single click.  People generally trust their friends’ advice more than that of someone they don’t know who posts a review on a travel review site.

And finally, most of the larger travel-related players are more text-centric, despite the fact that we’ve found people generally prefer a more visual experience, one that gives them a better sense for the place they are reading about. People want to be sure they’re spending their money wisely, so in this case pictures really can speak louder than words.

Many of the new players you see in the travel space are trying to fill the voids left by the bigger sites, be it through social networking integration, more “browsing-friendly” interfaces, or encouraging users to write their own guides for places they’re familiar with. Ruba does a bit of all of this.

Ruba: from concept to launch, “The Ruba Story”

I love to travel.  I’ve been to 25 countries.  I’m an avid reader of Conde Nast Traveler magazine and always have a few dream trips in mind.  I sometimes use travel sites to book my trips but I haven’t yet found a site I love for discovering new travel destinations.  I’m not always going to be planning a specific trip, but I enjoy browsing new travel destinations and storing them for when I have time to get away.  That was one of my main goals for Ruba, to make it fun and easy to discover some amazing places around the world for you to visit the next time you’re ready to travel.

So we set to work making sure that our site would be fast, easy to browse, and full of content that is fun to read and full of great information. We started with Western Europe and Southeast Asia since those are both popular destinations for US travelers, but the ultimate goal is to cover all the countries and major cities of the world as well as be accessible to both US and international users.

We chose the name Ruba because we love short names that are easy to say, type, and remember.  Plus, we think Ruba evokes a bit of the exotic, exciting travel spirit.  

We launched in beta just over a month ago and already we have over 250,000 page views and tons of interesting guides, mostly for Western Europe and Southeast Asia, though we are starting to get content for a number of other countries.

What makes Ruba different / unique?

First, our primary interface is visual as opposed to text based.  We have thousands of high quality pictures for the places people are recommending, and we show the pictures first and the comment the user wrote second.  We’ve found that visitors to our site love looking at the big, beautiful pictures and wandering “virtually” around the world using our browsing interface. 

Through our thematic guides, and visual interface, we strive to be a more fun place to browse and discover new destinations. If you find an author whose guides you really like, it’s easy to browse through the rest of their guides.

We also provide a faster browsing experience, one that’s more succinct, and one that’s more about discovery. Even though almost every page on our site is loaded with high-quality pictures, the page loads times are very fast. 

Another unique feature that Ruba has is its related searches.  This is an amazing tool for browsing.  It’s fast and fun, and you can lose track of time easily while exploring this way.  Here’s how it works.  Start on any Guide, like “Places To See in Berlin” for example.  Next to that Guide you’ll see some related ones like:

-         Best Clubs in Berlin Germany

-         5 Great Spots around Germany

-         Top 5 Events in Germany

And if you click on the last one above, you’ll also see a NEW list of related Guides to check out like:

-         5 Romantic German Christmas Markets

-         Oktoberfest – 5 Reasons To Go!

Finally, we’ve put a huge emphasis on integration with Facebook and Twitter. From any guide page you can share what you’re seeing on either site and you can even ask your Facebook friends for their travel advice with a single click.

Where do you go from here?

Right now we’re focused on adding features and building our community.  We recently added an application on Facebook that allows you to create guides right from your Facebook profile. We are going to continue adding new countries to our homepage with the ultimate goal of having every country in the world.

What was the best trip you ever took?

Wow, that’s a tough one.  Probably Russia.  I swam in an outdoor pool in Moscow during January.  It was about 5 degrees (F) out.  You put your swimsuit on inside, then dove into a tunnel that let you swim to the outdoor pool.  I also saw the ballet in Leningrad and visited Leningrad University.  I had an amazing time!