Mygola’s goal is to be a global uber travel agent – a travel agent for the 21st centiury – one that blends intuitive technology and brings in the human element only at the last mile, to make it easy for customers to plan their holidays.

So I decide to give it a spin.

The site prompts you to ask one question – where do you want to go? I answer, “Penang, Malaysia”. It then asks me where I want to go in Penang. I say Georgetown and then it asks me what I need help with – hotels, food, nightlife, what-to-see, car rentals … I click on “what-to-see” and it prompts me to tick – I’ve been to this destination before or give me only offbeat, local stuff, and then to say “Stuff I like”.

I type in “heritage”. Then it asks me if I’m travelling with … parents, solo, friends, spouse/partner, and asks me my age and interests. It then prompts me to sign in with my Facebook and Twitter accounts but I decline, and I sign in with email address.

It then asks me to add co-travellers – which is strange since I said I was travelling solo. But never mind, I skip this.

It then says “Ask friends to help” and tells me, “we couldn’t find any of your friends who’ve been to Penang, Malaysia” and asks me “to add friends from Facebook”. So all roads lead to Facebook. Damn.

I do that and my Facebook pops up (screenshot below) and prompts me to do a status update telling my friends, “I am going to be in Penang Malaysia. I need suggestions for what all I should see, give me only offbeat & local stuff. Things I like – heritage. I am traveling alone – 50, anything goes.”

It then asks if I’d like them to help me book the trip or add travellers, so you can plan the trip with your co-travelers. 

Not a bad experience, about 10 steps and it took me 7 minutes to get to my “friends” and the user interface with its prompts is idiot-proof. But could I just have logged into my own Facebook page and ask that question instead of going through a third party and sharing my details?

But it does help to take the pain out of asking questions because, as Bapna agrees, people aren’t very good at asking open-ended questions, hence the interface that prompts answers.

Bapna said he decided to start Mygola after a career with Google to solve the complexity in travel planning. “There’s such hyper specialization on the web – how do you pull all this together?”

His first prototype was a mash-up of all types of travel planning sites. “I showed it to early users. The feedback was cool but aren’t you just adding one more layer to the complexity? Why can’t I have an experience like with a friend?”

And so the idea of Mygola took root. “What if we could combine technology with the high touch and personalization that only humans could provide?”

Bapna says the company blends a strong technology DNA with a strong services operations. It has 4,000 “guides” and is adding 100 a week. “Guides” are travel enthusiasts and they get paid for their answers, with rates depending on the wuality of their answers. There are three levels – the lowest being a “newbie” who is assigned a mentor/buddy.

In the beginning, there was a lot more human element involved but now technology takes the customer up to the last mile. “The guide only jumps in when the question gets really hard.”

“A hybrid approach works best – blending computer science with human judgement to be the travel agent of the 21st century.”

Thus far, the site has found traction with two key segments – young couples with kids who are web-savvy, travel-intensive but cannot be as impulsive as solo travellers and professionals such as photographers and travellers who have no executive support.

Currently, 30% of its customers are from India, 40% from the US and the rest elsewhere. “We are technically a US company but engineering is in India.”

Mygola is Bapna’s second start-up. His first was acquired by Stratify. Mygola’s revenue streams come from customers who pay a US$30 fee to ask an unlimited number of questions and commissions on bookings, which are done by a traditional travel agent.

“We want to focus on travel planning and make it fun again. Why should it be such a chore? To lean forward, cut and paste, create spreadsheets. It should be a lean back, browse experience.”

Note: Anshuman Bapna will be speaking at WIT Conference 2012 – see programme.