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by Phillip Butler
Norwegian travel guide/trip planning startup Stay.com has just announced a new set of features to an already award winning travel platform. Named Time Magazine’s top travel site of 2010, Stay offers a new take on DIY trip planning. This week’s news centers around travel guide building using tips from various social networks. For people interesting in being inspired during leisure trip planning, these latest features will probably be a big hit.
Stay.com has already released various mobile elements, the integration of Google Places, and a myriad of destinations added venues. The “suggestion” tool compliments nicely the overall usability on Stay. Now users can interact around destinations, even around specific places within a destination. The new features are designed to greatly improve destination guides for travelers, as well as the overall interactive features of Stay.
Users simply ask for recommendations from friends or family on Facebook (for instance) and people within their networks can easily select places and things to do within their own knowledge base. Anyone with a Stay.com account can search a place in a particular city using Stay’s proprietary search, and then drag-and-drop their suggestions into a friend’s guide as a tip. Suggestions are then either be adopted or rejected, of course.
Stay.com claims this new collaborative social tool greatly enhances the Stay.com usability, which certainly makes sense. Along with the newest Android and iPhone applications, Stay.com users can create customized travel plans on-the-go, and as the developers suggest, without using any roaming charges. The mobile apps allow users to download maps and etc. so there’s not bandwidth used during the process.
As per usual, Stay.com allows users to even print out in PDF form, their completed guides. This most recent upgrade for Stay.com further engages the social web with a rather striking travel tool. For people who enjoy the trip planning experience online, or even people in a hurry who want to store tips and suggestions from friends and relatives, Stay.com has come a long way in providing nice tools.
About Stay.com:
Named one of Time Magazine’s top 50 websites for 2010, tops in its category, Stay.com is a development from Norway. An online trip-planning platform that allows users to create custom travel guides for each destination they want to visit, Stay.com offers thousands of hotels, restaurants, and other attractions to choose from. With the addition of suggestion features and mobile utility, Stay.com as a resource may grow exponentially.
For more information visit Stay.com, or follow Stay on Facebook and Twitter @staydotcom
Phil Butler is CEO in Argophilia Travel and senior partner at Pamil Visioins – consultants to Stay.com
