I have already done a number of profiles in this area including one of the Budapest based Joobili (pronounced Jubilee). Now I have had a chance to spend time over skype with Jared Salter the founder and CEO of Joobili to hear about his experiences in founding a online travel company in Europe, on time based travel inspiration, on the balance between pre search information requesting and post search refinement and the rights and wrongs of attending a Swiss turnip festival.

In short Joobili is a time based travel search, discovery and inspiration engine. At the entry screen you select the date range you are interesting in travelling on and Joobili replies with a list of festivals, activities, events and time based entertainment that are on during that time period. Options for refinement are then presented to help narrow down the list to a short list of trips. Joobili starts with the question “when do you want to go?” rather the standard OTA question “where do you want to go?”.

As with other interviews, this is best suited to a two part blog post. In the first part we will talk about the set up of the company especially raising money in and running a business from Europe. Then in part two I will share our discussions on the functionality of Joobili and the travel and inspiration market/industry.

The interesting summary of part one of this interview is that Jared and his partner Tamas Gabor managed to raise seed money for an Eastern European based company without a prototype. They had a business plan and powerpoint that so impressed or struck the Swiss born Esther Dyson that she gave money without a working site and despite the possible challenges of monitoring a business off the beaten track (VC wise).

BOOT: Where did the idea come from? Do you have a history in tech or travel?

Jared from Joobili: I moved to Budapest from a corporate job in San Francisco to do an MBA. There I met my co-founder of Joobili Tamas Gabor. It was his idea to look at calendar based travels. Other sites start with the destination. We spent the first few months scouring the internet but could not find anyone doing calendar search. We built the initial business case during the MBA. The product took off when we secured funding.

BOOT: At what point did you decided to seek funding? Had you built a proto-type yet or did you manage to get funding off the back of a powerpoint deck and business plan?

Jared from Joobili: It is different for each entrepreneur but as neither of us had a tech background we had to raise money with just a business plan. Which was tough. But we needed money to build a beta site.

BOOT: Europe is not famous for lending money on a ppt only. Traditionally Euro VCs want to see something built, if fact more often than not they are looking for series B work. Did you have to go to America to get angel funding with nothing built.

Jared from Joobili: Yes Had been going after a lot of different Euro investors and VCs. We were lucky that Ester Dyson (investor in Orbitz, Flickr, Delicious, Dopplr and more) was coming to Budapest as part of some Euro boards that she was on. We got a meeting with her to show her our detailed plans and forecasts. It ended up being just a one hour but she committed. “This is something that belongs on the web” was her quote.

BOOT: Budapest is not the first place that springs to mind when I think of online travel and tech innovation. What has it been like trying to run a business from Budapest?

Jared from Joobili: From a standpoint of travel and start up it is a bad thing- as you miss out on the networking opportunities. So we do frequent trips to London. Last September we were involved in Seedcamp – one of only two travel companies. This month I will be at WTM so we get out as much as we can. That said there is a reason we started here and I would do it again. It is very cost efficient to develop technology here. There are some talented developers in Budapest. Given the amount of seed capital we raised, we would never able to build this business in San Francisco or London.

BOOT: Are you looking for more funding?

Jared from Joobili Fair to say that any start-up is always on the hunt for more money to develop new features. The list of features we want to build is longer than we can afford. And this is a tough market, especially for the discovery part of travel as it is the least tapped space of the travel process.

In part two we will talk about the Joobili business model and travel discovery and inspiration business.

The campaign aims to promote the Canary Islands as the preferred Winter Sun destination for Northern Europeans. One hundred Canarian Ambassadors were recruited to travel to Iceland to select one hundred Icelanders to enjoy an expenses paid trip to the Canaries. The selection of the fortunate 100 Icelanders kicked off at a Castings Party in Reykjavik Art Museum.

Tamaimos.com, a Canary Islands current affairs website, is critical of some aspects of the campaign in their post Operation No Winter Blues. Tamaimos asked for my opinion of the campaign as a European tourism expert and a first hand observer.

There’s also been some negativity about the campaign on the Icelandic marketing blog Transmit in their post Unorthodox Marketing! The Canary Islands invade Reykjavik which is mentioned in the interview.

I was interviewed over Skype by Iván Vega, co-writer of Tamaimos.com. The interview was conducted in English, as I can’t speak Spanish and Iván speaks English very well. You can listen to the interview below (in two parts as at one point the line went dead). The sound quality isn’t great as the interview was done over a rather echoey line.

Part 1: Ivan Vega of Tamaimos interviews Karen Bryan of Europe a la Carte

Part 2: Ivan Vega of Tamaimos interviews Karen Bryan of Europe a la Carte

What’s your opinion of the Canary Islands Mission Iceland phase of the No Winter Blues initiative?

Don’t forget there’s another chance to win a weekend in Dublin in the Pull Your Own Pint online game. Any player who can score 100 will be entered into the draw to take place at the end of November, to win the prize of spending St Patrick’s Weekend 2010 in Dublin.

Competition:

The Europe a la Carte Blog Twitter competition (4) launches today. To win you have to correctly identify the location in the background photo of my @karenbryan Twitter page. I’ll be giving clues on Twitter during the competition to help you work out the background photo location. You’ll also need to answer the tiebreaker question.

The destination displayed on the Twitter page background has been written about in the Europe a la Carte Blog. You must leave your answer as a comment on this blog post, also answering the tiebreaker question. The tiebreaker kicks in if either no-one gets the destination correctly or if more than one person gets the correct destination. The tiebreaker enables me to choose a winner by judging the most entertaining and/or insightful answer.

The Prize:

The short break to Dublin comprising of three parts:

Part 1: Two nights accommodation on a B&B basis in the Arlington Temple Bar Hotel in Dublin with Irish Show and meal on one night. The Arlington Temple Bar is part of the Louis Fitgerald group of Dublin hotels and bars, on Twitter as @LouisFitgerald.

You can arrange your stay at any time up to 30 December 2010, subject to availability. The winner of the Europe a la Carte Twitter Competition (4) will also receive 30 euro credit at one of the tables with its own beer tap. You can start practising for your stay by playing the Pull Your Own Pint online game. Everyone should try their hand at the game, as any player who can score 100 will be entered into the draw to take place at the end of November, to win the prize of spending St Patrick’s Weekend 2010 in Dublin.

Pull you own pint table at Arlington Temple Bar

Part 2: Two x 2 day Dublin passes courtesy of Visit Dublin. Dublin Passes includ free entry to over 30 top attractions such as Dublin Castle, Dublin Writers Museum and the Guinness Storehouse. It also covers transfer from Dublin Airport to the city centre on Aircoach.

Dublin Castle Gardens

Part 3: A 3 course evening meal with a bottle of house wine at the Gallery Restaurant at the The Church. I had lunch at The Church when I was in Dublin in October 2009, the food’s great and it’s an amazing building. You can follow @thechurch_ie on Twitter.

How to enter:

1 Click through to @karenbryan Twitter page.

2 Decide on the location of the background photo. It’s in Lombardy in Italy. Follow me on Twitter @karenbryan for some more clues during the week. To follow me you need to click on the Follow button just under the small photo of me at the top left of my Twitter page.

3 Return to this blog post and write a comment with the name of the location in the Twitter background photo and the answer to the question, “What most appeals to you about visiting Dublin?”

Exclusions:

Members of the Europe a la Carte blogging team can’t enter the competition (as they can read the comments in blog admin).

Closing date:

Competition entries by blog comment must be made by midnight GMT on Sunday 15 November 2009.

Good luck and look out for some more great prizes in future Europe a la Carte Twitter competitions.

Thanks Laureen, Ulrike and Sian from Trivago team, I had a chance to give some tips for the hoteliers in the Trivago newsletter.

I copy my stuff and you can also read the complete newsletter here

Featured market voice of the month:

October 2009

Claude Benard, Consulting & training for hotel and tourism players - Hotelitour

10 tips to manage your reputation online

Travelers all around the world place a lot of trust in other travelers, websites and online travel agencies that allow people to review hotels that they have stayed at.

According to studies, nearly 1 in 5 travelers admit to reading guest reviews online about hotels before making a final booking, and about 1 in 10 travelers will write a review after their stay. Whether you like it or not, this new Internet trend will not change and as a hotel owner it is important to keep up-to-date with what your guests are writing about your hotel on the Internet because reviews (positive and negative) can directly impact your brand and your future bookings.

To help, I have put together 10 tips to help you manage your online reputation.

1 - Monitoring your reviews and hotel brand over the Internet

- Use the free service from Trivago that brings together reviews from a number of different sites, so that you can get an overview of your hotel reviews and watch your POPULARITY INDEX

- Use the free tool to build up your own brand monitoring tool. Sign up for Google and Yahoo email alerts using specific keywords, for example, your hotel name. (http://alerts.yahoo.com/ and www.google.com/alerts). Do the same with blogs and monitor them with http://technorati.com/watchlist/ Create your own personal search engine with http://rollyo.com/ to provide relevant results from a hand selected list of reliable sites with the desired keywords.

2 - Get your staff involved.

All of your staff need to be aware that your guests reviews impact your business. Make trainings at the reception desk and in the sales and marketing department. Nominate a member of staff to take control.

3 - Respond pro-actively

Don’t be afraid about guest reviews and negative reviews, travelers would rather write about their positive experiences than their negative experiences. Respond pro-actively to guest reviews and user generated content. Hotel management can establish a response policy. You should respond to reviews breifly, in a personal and professional manner.

4 - Develop programs to encourage your satisfied guests to write positive reviews.

Remember the mathematic rule; fewer reviews imply a less popular hotel. In your communication with your guests and after each stay you should encourage them to post a review on different reviewwebsites.

5 - Analyze/Improve

You have to take advantage of all this “data” from your guests. It’s marketing “data” for your hotel. Analyze your guest reviews to understand trends, identify gaps in your performance in comparison to your competitors, identify gaps in your hotel services. This “data” can help you with future investment decisions.

6 - Use “guest reviews” in your official communication

For example, in the next email that you send to your guests you can incorporate your guests reviews to help your customers more comfortable staying at your hotel.

7 - Be aware about your guest reviews have a big impact

While there is a high adoption rate with the individual traveler, many meeting planners now use traveler reviews to learn about hotel reputations. Bad comments may prevent your hotel from ever being considered for a group business.

8 - The automation solution

Hotel chains or large hotels may consider investing in an automated tool that monitors all of the conversations that are happening about their properties, rather than looking at dozens of hotel-review sites, blogs, and forums. Is a solution affordable? Use this formula: calculate the hours that it takes to monitor everything and the opportunity cost of what could be accomplished with the efficiency of technology, particularly where revenue generating team members are involved in the process.

9 - Hotel user review widget

You may consider integrating this widget on your website. Ask yourself these questions:

Is the integration easy and safe?

Does the widget have some design flexibility?

Ask your Trivago team representative about the Trivago Hotel Widget.

10 - Participate in global travel discussions.

Engage in discussions with the consumer, your future potential client. It is an essential part of your travel 2.0 marketing strategy; it will improve your brand awareness. I suggest engaging in discussions on leading travel blogs and leading travel forums, I am sure you will learn and discover useful tips and advice.

Conclusion:

Many consumers consult online reviews before making online or offline travel arrangements. Remember that positive as well as negative reviews increase consumer awareness of your hotel and positive reviews improve consumer attitudes towards your hotel.

I wish you all the success for the future!

Road trip fan? Hate hours in the car? Love ‘em or hate ‘em, check out Gadling writers Annie Scott and Mike Barish go head to head with Top Ten Reasons that Road Trips Suck vs. Top Ten Reasons that Road Trips Rock.

Need a little destination inspiration? Check out these beautiful photos of China.

Ever wonder why we use definitive articles in certain destination names like The Netherlands or The Ukraine or The Hague? Check out Slate Magazine to find out why.

Need new travel gear? Make a purchase from a company that gives back. Find out who does by checking out Jaunted’s post on Five Travel Gear Companies that Give Back to the World.

And lastly, ever wonder why some things are blurred out on Google Maps satellite view? Check out 51Things You Aren’t Allowed to See on Google Maps.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

[Photo: Stig Nygaard/Creative Commons]

(See more Photo Friday fun here)

Style: Streamlined chrome cool
Setting: Oh, Vienna

Why this week? Austria’s opulence seduces with every passing season but this time of year is especially spectacular, because Christmas and all its charms come knocking – and a trip to one of Vienna’s many chocolate-box Christmas markets will have you full of seasonal good will in no time. From the last week of November to Christmas Eve, Vienna breaks into a flurry of festive folly. See the Rathaus (Town Hall) lit up and surrounded by an array of activities certain to enchant the little Smiths, and visit Schönbrunn Palace market to sample more mulled wine, spiced gingerbread and creative crafts than you can shake a stocking at. And if that doesn’t tempt you, combine culture and thrift with Mr and Mrs Smith’s November offer of 2 nights at Levante Parliament hotel for the price of 3.

Our favourite bits The hotel gets its name from the proximity of the Parliament building, but it’s a far cry from the velvet-upholstered fustiness its name might suggest. Romania-born designer Ioan Nemtoi has given the place high-octane impact. Entirely crafted of glass, the Nemtoi bar is a fitting sleek hors d’oeuvre for the restaurant, which features a menu of international delicacies. Delicately spiralling glass tendril screens keep your dining experience private.

Mr and Mrs Smith say ‘The Levante Parliament in Vienna’s Auerspergstrasse is a refreshing design hotel, housed in a building that dates back to 1908. Its lobby and entrance hall are deliberately laid out and lit as a gallery space. Along with the ubiquitous glass sculptures throughout the hotel, there are works by the celebrated Viennese photographer Curt Themessl. All artworks are for sale but, sadly, out of this pair’s price range. The reddish tinges of Nemtoi’s creations add a glow to the hotel’s 74 rooms and suites, which feature furniture of a dark, dense tropical wood from Africa known as wengé. The rooms are warm, welcoming and comfortable, with eiderdowned beds whose wide borders of coral orange add a glow to the soothing combination of browns and beiges in the fitted carpet and drapes. While my lady was luxuriating in the waterfall shower surrounded by highly polished cream Italian marble and a comprehensive stock of designer supplies, I had the opportunity to explore the treasures and pleasures of the minibar’s exotic blends and vintages and to try out the free high-speed Internet. The latter was a handy way to fill in certain gaps in my knowledge of glass sculpture…’

Read full review here

Compiled by Hannah Thompson