Next generation travel - Journey of new traveler

Its been a long journey for the typical traveler - the traveler has moved from brochure information (well crafted - beautified marketing information) to real travel experience - blogs, candid photos, trip journals - trip advisor's. Though I feel this kind of information is in the right direction - My issue has always been with the information overflow. Being someone who has been well versed with the travel industry (since my own company XYKA deals with building these next generation travel tools) - I sometimes find myself lost in the overflow of information. Gone are the days where there was lack of information. but now there is so much of information that it gets fuzzy understanding the data. There are many different sources to get realistic information - referral system is still the most basic form of trusted information - but tripadvisor.com and sites like these also gets skewed between marketing and source of information. The much hyped travel 2.0 and web 2.0 sites are great but since most of the sites are still trying to woo the user generated content, it would be a while before these sites mature. The expectation of the common next generation traveler is to able to very quickly see consolidated most recent blogs, pictures, wants very real data - comparison of real prices - availability and the ease of booking. The next generation travel (the 3.0 or 4.0 ..) version of web reservations would be dictated by the traveler who wants to experience the travel before he travels making sure that he has absolutely made the right decision of choosing the travel itinerary.

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