How to Hack a Great Trip

“…

As a traveler, you’ve made some anchor decisions — some subset of who’s going, where, when and why. You also have some preferences — e.g. brands, budget etc. You need to discover your options for transportation, lodging and activities within those constraints, so what you do is:

• Search multiple times for the different items with different constraints, e.g. “what flights are there on Monday and what if we fly out on Sunday” “what are our hotel options or how about vacation rentals”
• Collect alternatives, understand their implications and rank them e.g. “I’d rather drive down Highway 1 cause it’s more scenic, but that means we have to stay the night in Oxnard”
• Share this plan with other participants to get their opinion too
• Repeat prior steps until you run out of time and have to decide
• Book, go…

The current state of play does not support this workflow very well.

…”

The excerpt was taken from the excellent Tnooz post by Nadav Gur.

Here comes Curiosio

Curiosio solves majority of those problems for classical trips, like entire country in two weeks. You choose desired country, select dates, specify now many people are going, comfort preferences and curiosity intensity, and your desired budget to fit in — and in one click you’ll get your trip.

Workflow

Let’s consider two people from Boston are going to sightsee Spain. They bought return flights Boston-Barcelona in advance, during some promotion by their favorite airline. Now, closer to the dates of the trip, it’s right time to plan all details.

So two tourists from Boston got 12 days, with arrival to Barcelona, and departure from Barcelona. Besides air fare, they plan to spend within $3,000, not more. And have good lodging, good food, not less than twice a day, and be active enough to see a lot during every day.

1. Go to https://curiosio.com and select a country of interest — Spain.

2. Enter number of travelers, dates, budget, start and end city, select comfort, curiosity.

3. Examine proposed trip — the actual budget, route, places. Look to alternatives, within same constraints.

There could be more but less expensive citites & towns in the route, e.g. this alernative.

While two proposed routes look differently, they are both good, and both conform to start & finish Barcelona, budget for two, comfort.

4. Traveler could change some options and get different route. E.g. those travelers decided to decrease the budget to $2500. Then it repeats from the step #2. Need to click Modify Search button.

5. Let’s assume that two travelers liked this trip.

6. Now they could go further: share trip, save trip, export the route to Google Maps, HERE Maps, click individual cities and places to read more about them on Wikipedia and Wikivoyage.

Shareable link simplifies joint planning of the trip. Travelers could play with the options and find better and better trips exactly for them, show to each other, until agreed.

Export to Google Maps and HERE Maps shown below.

It is possible then to send directions into the car that will be used during the trip. Google Maps could be sent to many car navigation systems. You could also use your phone as navigator, if the map of Spain is downloaded for offline use; or use them online, if you have good data plan in Spanish telecom space.

Clicks on the POI names like Museu Picasso or Casa Batlló will open new browser tab with their Wikipedia pages. Below is the second one.

7. Go to Checklist, book, go… You could select you preferred hotel chain on Expedia. Curiosio pre-filters hotels by your comfort wishes and budget constraints. It is absolutely OK to overspend on hotel in one city and save in another. This is up to you. As long as you stay within average prices, you will stay within desired budget.

If the flights already bought (like in our case), then just toggle them as booked. It’s good hack to book a car, and first and last hotel in advance, to secure arrival and departure. The mid of the trip could remain flexible. Or could remain as is, you jsut book as you go. Or book’em all, with flexible cancelation policy, if you might change something. For lowest costs, buy them all without cancelation. Many options are possible.

8. Go… It will be perfect road trip. Exclusive for two travelers from Boston. Who bought flights in advance, during some promo. They wanted to fit within 12 days and $3,000 (besides flights), start in Barcelona and finish in Barcelona, have good lodging and food, and see pretty much. They got it.

Almost in one click. Curiosio is made by AI for people. That’s why it’s smart and fast. We will be happy if half of the problems, described at the beginning of this post, are solved with Curiosio. Let us know.

mailto:info@curiosio.com to curiosio geeks