Project Wander reviews Vtravelled.com, Virgins travel community

Just when you thought there couldn’t be another trip planing tool on the market, out comes Virgin with VTravelled.com.To be fair, VTravelled is more than just a trip organizer; the site has articles, photos and destination tips all submitted by fellow users (VTravellers).

The first thing you will notice about the site is the design, I instantly liked the layout and presentation which comes across very modern and solid.The only drawback in this department was the inclusion of 3rd party ads, they really seem to detract from the great look they have going.

[View with PicLens]

The destinations, photography and inspiration (articles) sections are all UGC and fairly straight forward, so I won’t go in to them in too much detail. The “Trip pod” and “Vtravellers” sections are, in my eyes, the main selling feature of the site. Creating an online community from nothing is a huge task but it looks like Virgin have hooked in to the ego of the early adopters to essentially become subject matter experts in their chosen destination. Trip pods are an easy way for these experts to create itineraries to their chosen destinations or for the average traveller to build and save an aspirational holiday. The VTraveller section lets average users meet up with like minded travellers (Based on the users past trip pods and site interactions) and see their suggestions, trip pods and articles.

I think Vtravelled.com has the right idea, travellers are normally quite quick to share their experiences with anyone who will listen and the ego factor is something that their future community will be built on. From my perspective, their challenges will be the same as any site that runs purely on UGC- Quality of information, initial quantity of information available etc., but Virgin will have to overcome the additional obstacle of competing in a market that already has some major players. Travellr.com, for exmaple, is an excellent crowd sourcing tool for travellers that’s intuitive and has the advantage of sourcing answers from users outside of a closed community (Twitter).

In summary, Vtravelled.com is great looking and has the potential to build a massive community. Some of the features are fairly standard but are implemented very well, others are more innovative but have some stiff competition. It will be interesting to see if users will be willing to abandon their existing networks for a closed community that’s still growing. For those travel writers looking for some exposure, Vtravelled are looking for writers that specialize in different destinations. To apply, click here.