Travis Katz: Spike in user engagement.
With its 4th birthday around the horizon, social travel site Gogobot has revealed its plans for the future. Based in San Francisco and founded by Travis Katz and Ori Zaltzman, the site for places-to-go currently has more than 16 million users within the 18 to 44 age range and more than 60,000 destinations.
It launched its hotel metasearch in March, making it easier for users to see only reviews and best prices across the major online booking sites. More significantly, it launched its new mobile app for iOS and Android, allowing for more seamless collaborative trip planning, enhanced map based search and even the weather in the user’s current city.
Said Co-founder and CEO, Travis Katz, “We have completely reimagined travel discovery in our latest app, leveraging on both beautiful imagery and location based search. The product has more than 20 new features guided by data on how our users were using mobile.
“The new design reflects Gogobot’s mission to help people be insiders wherever they are and inspire them onto new adventures. Engagement has skyrocketed since launch, but this is just a first step towards our larger mobile vision that we will be rolling out in the next few months.” 
When asked on how the social travel platform differentiates itself from the competition, which includes incumbent TripAdvisor, Trippy and WAYN.com just to name a few, Travis said, “We like to think of ourselves as a personalised discovery tool. While Gogobot has some of the deepest content online, with more than 750,000 reviews and 4 million photos, it goes beyond the usual star ratings to learn your tastes and interests and recommends places that are right for you.”
Added Travis, “Unlike traditional travel sites that show the same list of recommendations, Gogobot’s Tribes feature (which is essentially audience segment including specific user target markets including Foodies, Adventure Travellers, LGBT and nightlife lovers) allows users to filter out the noise to find tips from like minded travelers. And importantly, we provide personalised recommendations, not anonymous reviews.”
