NextPlan — Custom Vacations Made Easy

First things first — I like to travel, and I like to get the best bang for my buck!
But when it comes to travel the consumer experience and right of way have been abandoned! If that is a bold statement, consider this. Vacationers dream up destinations and experiences hoping to make the most of their time and money. Yet, they soon discover they have to invest an inordinate amount of time stitching a vacation, and end up spending more money than they should be, leaving them feeling frustrated and dissatisfied. This is because the leading players in the travel segment tend to focus on point solutions. Whether it is selling flight tickets, or hotel accommodations, packaged tours or one-off experiences. The result — the consumer is left piecing together their vacation dreams!
It should not be this way. If you see something on National Geographic or BBC Travel, or if you simply heard about it from your social network, you should be able to immediately build a complete vacation around destinations and experiences of interest with little to no effort.
In a different era, we solved this problem — Prior to the internet, many of you (or at-least your parents) used to head down to the travel agent on main street. Armed with a (sometimes) vague idea of what you wanted to do and where you wanted to go, your budget, and your schedule you relied on the smart travel agent to furnish a few different options. The travel agent usually managed to do a good job optimizing on your behalf and building out your vacation itinerary. Of course, the world was much smaller; fewer destinations, fewer experiences, fewer travelers, fewer everything. Also the world moved slower; unlike today, where we want things and we want them instantly at our finger tips.
With the right approach, and technology, can’t we solve this for the modern age, and scale?
NextPlan’s approach and value — ‘One-stop vacation shopping experience’ . Nine months ago, we ventured out to change the world of leisure travel. We established 3 guiding principles to help shape our approach:
- ‘It’s all about the experiences!’ — Build for what users really want
- ‘Support user uniqueness’ — Build for easy customization as everyone’s vacation is unique
- ‘Keep it Simple’ — Build so users only take key decisions, system smarts does the rest
In fact, we believe the optimal approach transcends ‘vacation planning’ and instead establishes ‘vacation shopping’ that is as simple as any other online shopping experience we are used to.
The approach we have taken is one of letting users focus on destinations and experiences while NextPlan takes care of optimizing across schedule, budget, flights, hotel and routes. Additionally, our collaborative and social approach ensures you never have to plan in a vacuum again; share your plans, solicit feedback and refine your plans with a few clicks. Integrations with major players (Priceline, Kayak, Amadeus, Booking.com etc.) ensures peace of mind when it comes to the final booked itinerary. Under the covers we are combining best in class user experience with the latest in artificial intelligence and deep learning techniques to deliver unparalleled value to consumers.
We are just getting started — As a fledgling Silicon Valley startup, we bring a clean slate approach and plenty of out of the box thinking to bear on this multi-dimensional problem. The promise of NextPlan is huge and we will delve into the details in subsequent chapters of our story. In the meantime, it is heads down ‘building’ as we get ready for launch this winter!

