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Show HN: My MVP for a Travel Recommendation Engine

8 points by ry0ohki ↗ HN
Many years ago (2007?) I put together this site: http://www.tripzard.com . I never launched it, because it was basically a MVP/POC so it's not very refined, but I just found it again today and was surprised it still kind of works decent.

The idea was kind of like "Find Your Spot" where you answer a bunch of questions about what you like to do when you travel, and it calculates where the best places for your to travel would be. Most people I found don't realize there are some interesting options out there instead of just going to Cancun.

What does the HN community think, is this a project worth picking up again? The site is probably buggy etc.. but it does represent a lot of manual data gathering on my part and there still is nothing out there like this site to my knowledge. I've always enjoyed travel, geography and history so this project was definitely a joy to work on.

15 comments

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DanielStraight
I think it's a great idea. It would be nice to not have to answer so many questions though. Maybe a few basics, and then let me browse around and "like" things (NOT publicly on Facebook), and then infer what I like. More of a recommendation engine. But then with the option to manually "advanced search" using all (or some) of the questions.
tgrass
1. Too many questions

2. Ensure that the questions are all ordered the same; that is: conservative response, centrist, liberal (no crime, some crime, crime ok)

3. Cancun was the first return for me with 100%. Maybe I don't know myself, but I worked in back country Alaska and have crossed the country several times on motorcycle. I'm not the Cancun type. Your copy above says explicitly "instead of just going to Cancun." Hmmmm.

ry0ohki
That's pretty funny Cancun came up... the algorithm definitely needs work if I continue it, or maybe Cancun is your dream vacation and you didn't realize it ;)
sagacity
One quick suggestion, for Step 1 - use IP to geolocation and show visitor's country by default. Can improve the UX just a bit. :-)

I'd call it extremely well thought-out (even if not fully implemented yet) and way too cool! (I noticed some fine mod rewrite work there - super cool.)

With travel sector being one of the largest money spinners online, I'd say just floor the gas pedal on this, like now - I can already see the major (and not-so-major) online travel booking portals scrambling to license this from you.

ps. Give a serious thought to patenting this, urgently.

JonLim
I'm going to second this. I'm relatively young, and I have some cash to blow, but I don't always know where to go for vacations.

Love the idea by the way, keep developing it!

kongqiu
I really like this. Do you have the ability to bring smaller destinations in to the mix as well? (E.g., Moab, Aspen, Zacatecas, Mendoza, etc.)

I agree that there are too many questions. Ideally, I'd like one page of questions, with options to "refine" once I see the results. I think that having shorter questions with standard answers (e.g., "must"/"nice to have"/"don't care"/"don't want") would make it easier to quickly go through.

ry0ohki
I could bring it to anywhere in theory, just a matter of getting the data. I think I picked all major cities in North America and capitals of most of the rest of the world for this version
sagacity
I just completed running one full scenario (destination South America) and everything (including the results) went perfectly for me.

Now, some observations/suggestions, mainly related to SEO (Based on the current site, I'm nearly sure you already know this, but just in case):

1) Missing Title and meta tags

2) Consider rewriting

http://www.tripzard.com/results

to

http://www.tripzard.com/results/south_america (or whatever)

and

http://www.tripzard.com/places/91

to

http://www.tripzard.com/places/south_america/argentina/bueno...

Let me know if you need me to volunteer any work on this - will be happy to do what I can.

ry0ohki
Thanks for the tips, makes sense!
albahk
Maybe you could have some helpful presets to present some results quickly i.e.

- 18-24 year old male looking to go nuts <click here>

- adventurous couple with young kids <click here>

- boring, retired couple who are scared of ethnic food <click here>

I filled out the profile for Asia and got Bali - which is full of Aussie tourists drinking and surfing but I specifically wanted no night-life/partying/prostitution. Somewhere like Phuket, Koh Samui, Boracay would have been better fits in my opinion. I guess with more data points the accuracy should improve over time.

Jontuckerusa
Wanderfly.com has some features to check out. Good use of flickr api.

I had similar idea and found wanderfly, among others.