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Younger Generation
Kirby's Korner · July 29, 2000

Take a bunch of college-age people, add a dollop of travel, and stir in a bit of Internet.

Sounds like a winning recipe for a Web site, doesn't it?

Apparently few agree. For the amount of travel -- admittedly on the cheap -- college-age folk do, and for the high Internet connectivity rate among them, few companies have lined up to create a bandwagon.

You can find quite a few companies online that sell travel directly to student groups, but this misses the idea. Not everyone of college age is in school, and not all are interested in educational travel, but they share a common demographic. They don't want to be stuck vacationing with us older fogies.

You can also find many Web sites that are designed to do nothing more than sell travel to students. Spring Break Travel, Student Adventure Travel, and Student Travel Services, for example, all specialize in -- you've got it -- travel packages for those late-spring trips to Cancun or South Beach.

(They're promoting packages for next year already. Buy quickly, but do yourself a favor and turn your speakers down before linking to the Student Adventure Travel Web site.)

Where are the Web sites aimed at a young audience that do more than try to grab the next car payment or graduate-school savings? Where are the Expedia.coms or Travelocity.coms for a younger generation?

I've found three, all less than a year old.

TripHub.com is the granddaddy of the trio, started last fall but recently revised. In addition to the expected travel package sales, the site is encouraging college-age travelers to share their adventures by writing articles and participating in chat rooms and on message boards.

The site is decidedly aimed at college students, however, including the marketing push it is engaged in on college campuses.

GorillaGuide.com is still in a beta test. It is focused on European travel, and it actively invites site members to share their thoughts about locations and activities.

In addition to travel bookings and canned and participatory content, the site also offers ancillary services, such as a way for travelers to stay in touch with those they left behind through e-mail.

WhereNext.com also is focused on Europe initially, but it declares straightforwardly that it is not designed for Boomer parents or GenX slackers. Instead, it wants to attract people who have grown up using the Internet.

It is handling travel bookings through TripHub, but it is developing content aimed at a young generation through "niche providers" that specialize in "pop culture," according to company official Greg Bleakney.

Interestingly, WhereNext began with that ultimate combination of Real World and Internet start-up: college students creating a business plan and trying out ideas in an unheated basement apartment.

The sites face marketing problems: their target audience changes every few years, meaning they have to spend money constantly to attract new visitors. But TripHub's president, Liz Sickler, told me her company recognizes the problem and is trying to address it by reaching out to people just out of high school and working with other companies that can "adopt" the TripHub audience as it matures.

Let's hope we find a rowdy valedictorian in the group.

David Kirby is the editor of Interactive Travel Report. His column appears on Friday. You can reach him at david@ticked.com.