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I have this problem every year. Last year I went on a 6 week vacation. I wanted to go to an African safari, but where? What should I see? What route is best? Turns out safaris are super-expensive and I can only afford 2 weeks. What should I do for the rest of the time? My flight had a stop-over in Turkey, so I might as well spend a few weeks there. Should I also go to Greece, Croatia, or southern Italy? It was October so I only want to go where the weather is still warm. I wanted to stay in interesting B&Bs, go hiking in Crete, see gorillas in Uganda, etc.

I ended up going through a human travel agent who planned a wonderful trip at a steep discount to the luxury safari pre-planned trips because she understood what we wanted to pay for (experiences) and what we didn't care about (fancy hotels).



Thanks for the interesting example.

Couple of questions:

Not many people go on six week vacations, right? If you were planning a two week holiday, would you still be faced with so many decisions and complexity? If not, the market you represent would be limited to longer holidays, which may be a very small market.

Second, could an app provide you with a better service than your travel agent? i.e. is this a "problem", or is a "solved problem" because a satisfactory solution exists already?


I usually take 2 to 3 week vacations, but I try to do interesting things. Ride horses around mongolia. Hike volcanos in Indonesia. Bike and eat across France. Planning is a huge pain because we have to learn everything before we can make the right choices. A travel agent already knows the domain. I do think there could be tools to help agents arrange trips more quickly given our unique constraints. Sadly, there is no app for that. Regardless, the market is likely a small niche.




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