Yesterday, I listed a handful of new websites that are providing new and different ways of selling travel or of looking at the travel experience. Here are four more that deal with panoramic views, impending flight delays, local tourism providers and multi-modal search.
TourWrist.com
The big winner as new technology of the year was TourWrist. This is an app that allows your iPhone and iPad to be used for mind-blowing panoramic pictures. Once the app is installed, users can pan across a panoramic photo as well as up and down. It is the closest thing to being there that I have ever experienced on a computer. It is better than video, far easier to use and uses far less bandwidth.
I’d love to explain how it works. However, since I couldn’t quite understand the science behind it, the developer simply told me it was like magic. He is right.
Hopefully, you will be able to experience this on an iPad or iPhone. Seeing it on the website just isn’t the same, though the website gives a good idea of the capabilities of TourWrist.
To see this amazing technology in action click through to tnooz.com and scroll down to the photos in the story. It is far better to see the technology using your iPhone or iPad, but the page on the computer shows its amazing results. (The free version is limited to the panoramic camera view created on an iPhone. The photos seen with 360-degree coverage are created using their licensed technology.)
KnowDelay
This service was developed by a group of pilots and university professors and it predicts airport/airline delays with 90 percent accuracy days before travel. It is most useful for business travelers who may have reservations via a hub that is in for pending weather problems. Once the problem is identified, alternative flights can be discovered and booked.
Unfortunately, this won’t work for most leisure travelers who have nonrefundable tickets with high change fees.
Trekksoft
This new company deals with aggregating local tourism providers such as outfitters, rafting companies, fishing boats and other such activities. It provides a simple template, credit card capabilities and the ability to start up a local tourism operation easily.
Trekksoft is attempting to aggregate part of the travel market that has never been aggregated. If they succeed, local tourism activities will be able to be reserved and paid for over the Internet. It has never been done on a large scale before.
Rome2Rio
This developer has created software that provides inter-modal transportation between all points in the world.
For instance, if you wanted to plan on how to travel from Washington, DC, to Thusis, Switzerland, this website will provide you a door-to-door transportation overview — bus from your home to the airport, flight to Switzerland, train to Thusis.
This is the first search engine that combines in one program trains, buses, ferries and air. It is an amazing site and the technology will be licensed to larger sites so that they can provide this kind of travel search capability.
Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.
