According to CyberDialogue , travel information is the single most sought after item on the Web, searched for by 38% of Web users. Tap into this interest by posting easy-to-use travel info, such as the flight-tracking services of TheTrip.com www.thetrip.com. Other providers of online travel reservations are listed at www.yahoo.com/Recreation/Travel/Air_Travel/Online_Reservations .

We rate TheTrip.com as one of our 10 most useful Web-based consumer services. The privately held company targets the 5.8 million business travelers it says are using the Web. Besides being fast and easy to use, TheTrip.com is surprisingly free of advertising clutter.

TheTrip’s graphical flight tracker uses Java.
The text version (below) is much faster and easier to read, though you can’t watch a little plane (by the seond N in Pennsylvania) cross the map.

Bookmark this: Flight tracking at TheTrip.com.

Source: TheTrip.com

TheTrip.com provides information in just about every travel category you can think of including rental cars, hotels, airport info, low-fare searches, email-based bargain fare alerts, city guides, travel tips, along with a smattering of original editorial content. But the feature we think most appropriate for posting on a financial institution Web is the real-time flight tracker (screenshots left).

Simply enter an airline name and flight number. Literally within seconds (on the text version), you’ll see the complete flight status including the estimated time of arrival, flight speed, altitude, and exact geographic position (see table below left). The information changes every few minutes based on national radar data, so you can monitor exact arrival times (allowing you to leave for the airport at the very last minute!). We’re not sure what you do with real-time flight speed and altitude, but it’s impressive as hell anyway.

We like this service for banking Webs. Why?

•  Easy to use; just fill in two blanks and press enter (Warning: use the text version, the graphical Java version in beta is s......l.....o......w).
•  Useful to anyone who flies or picks someone up at the airport, especially business clients.
•  New and impressive — just the ticket for creating positive word-of-mouth about your Web.
•  A PR opportunity.
•  Does not compete with local travel agents; in fact they might use it themselves.
•  Can be used as a platform to cross-sell banking services geared to travelers such as online banking, travel loans, foreign exchange, etc.

There are a couple ways to incorporate flight-tracking services into your Web. The easiest: a simple guided link to the TheTrip.com, possibly running within a frame if the company agrees to that approach, or work with them to create a private or co-branded service delivered through your Web. TheTrip.com is currently distributed through US West’s DiveIn, AOL’s Digital Cities network, CBS, USA Today, Carlson, Infospace, Pointcast, Business Week and others.

A more involved approach would be to layer local information on top of TheTrip.com’s flight tracking. For instance, airport parking, transportation to and from the airport, traffic reports, weather forecasts, travel agent database, and so on. See #14 on the following page.

Contact: Antoine Toffa, formerly GM of Product Development for U S West Interactive Services, is CEO, atoffa@thetrip.com , (303) 708-7247.