A local web development company the Cloud Council has built a new travel website, Travelier, that launched Tuesday in Las Vegas. The promotional video was also produced locally.
Travel industry veteran and career-long entrepreneur Porter Briggs launched Travelier, a new travel “discovery engine,” at the Society of American Travel Writers Annual Conference. Rather than a familiar search engine, the discovery engine, Travelier, is a one-stop, go-to travel-planning tool for finding both the obvious and obscure destinations that exist in the United States.
Travelier houses more than 90,000 destinations in 80 unique categories for travelers to search for, locate, and find their desired location. With a few quick clicks, Travelier makes it easy to find not only the well-known, but also the new, hip or lesser known destinations anywhere in the country for mapping out a road trip in advance, or an afternoon outing at the last minute.
“No matter where you are going, Travelier makes it easy for you to find destinations relevant to your interest, hobby or passion, anywhere across the country,” said Mr. Briggs. “Our staff has researched and listed, one by one, over 90,000 destinations in the U.S. and it is still growing. Travelers in the U.S. can simply type in their destination and instantly see all options displayed by specific categories on Google Maps.”
Travelier began after Mr. Briggs hosted guests from Switzerland who asked what there was to do in his Little Rock home. After diligently compiling a list of things to see and do around him, Mr. Briggs realized there was a universal need for his research, but on a larger scale. At that point, Mr. Briggs hired 18 researchers and began the 21-month arduous task of researching and assembling the data on the destinations. The research has been compiled into the handcrafted discovery engine.
"Every destination, all 90,000 of them, has been researched, a description written, and added to our database one by one by smart people," said Mr. Briggs. "Plus, our team assigned one or more of the 83 categories to each destination enabling users to customize it for their particular interests."
The categories make the discovery engine an even more valuable tool because it allows users to search for whatever interest they may have and shows destinations they would not have discovered otherwise, said officials. For instance, Discovery Park, a city park in Seattle, has 17 categories assigned to it, so visitors to Seattle – and even its residents -- will now be able to see that it has a historic site, birding, hiking and many other activities.
After its launch, Travelier’s discovery engine will become a community driven travel service as well, through an “add destinations” feature. So users can add a favorite, but perhaps little known destination, for others with similar interests. Other functions of the site include custom travel wish lists, search profiles, whether a destination is pet or child friendly and handicap accessible, along with predictive technology that will provide recommendations for Travelier users based on previous behavior and account information.