VibeAgent has been picking up steam as we get closer to the site’s launch. I’d like to highlight some of the mainstream media coverage we’re receiving and thank those that are taking notice of what we’re up to!

Jeri Clausing, over at Travel Weekly, nailed it in this week’s cover story on user-generated content:

A new site launching next month, VibeAgent, will take the TripAdvisor concept to another level by marrying hotel reviews, social networks, personal preferences and competitive pricing…the site uses a user’s personal profile and reviews by people in the user’s personal network to find the hotel that best suits him or her. It also lets users specify during a search if they are looking for something specific, such as a romantic hotel with a luxurious spa. It then uses an algorithm to find the right personal option and does a meta-search of various online booking sites to find the cheapest prices for hotels.

Last week, Gary Lee of The Washington Post called VibeAgent a “hip, new travel site,” stating on the site’s travel blog:

Vibeagent.com, a new travel site launched not long ago by a couple of young travel entrepreneurs, is positioning itself to be the first trip-planning stop for savvy travelers…It’s a kind of fresher, more youthful version of the increasinging popular Tripadvisor.com.

Rob Lovitt at MSNBC featured VibeAgent as an exciting new travel site, saying:

Why it’s cool: When it’s time to find a hotel, the site will cross-reference your preferences with its existing database. Factoring in other users’ reviews and any social-network group you’ve created, it will assign each result a “vibe index” based on your parameters and others’ recommendations. “The more information you put in,” says co-founder and CEO Adam Healey, “the better the recommendations will be.”

Once you’ve selected a hotel, the site then switches into meta-search mode, scouring the Web for the best price through various OTAs and hotel-chain reservation systems. The idea, says Healey, is to provide recommendations you can trust at the best possible prices all on one site.

And Sean Dodson over at The Guardian in the UK named VibeAgent “Best of the Net”, pointing out our advantages over TripAdvisor.

It’s an uphill battle taking on the market leader, but we’re looking forward to the challenge - I’ll be sure to keep you posted as VibeAgent’s star continues to rise!

Well, this blog has been quiet over the last 3 weeks, and for that I apologize.

However, the explanation for this radio silence relates to the well-known inverse relationship between doing stuff and talking about doing stuff. We’ve been conducting our own surge of sorts over here, increasing not troop levels but instead our collective capacity for sleep deprivation The difference is, our surge has been working.

On that note, we’ve got some exciting new goodies for you today!

First up - My Trips. It’s pretty simple, really. Simply AWESOME! Post and share your trips. See where all your friends are going. All on your Me page. Now you can keep track of your jet-setting friends as they bounce around the globe living LIFE. And where are YOU going next, huh? Booked your accommodations yet? Reviewed it yet? What are you waiting for - seize the carp!

My Trips is not quite the endgame, but we hope we’ve provided a nice platform for our collective future and I bet you can see where we’re starting to taking this. As always, your input is welcome and very much appreciated.

Today we’re also launching several other new features and improvements on the site, related to our signup process, meta-search, our hotel pages, and hotel reviews.

You’ll start to see some great new avatars on our site. We’ve been incredibly fortunate to work with the legendary Paige Pooler to create a customized avatar set just for VibeAgent! We absolutely love love love them! Thanks Paige!!! Now you shy folks that don’t want to upload your photo can simply select one of our 10 VibeAgent exclusive avatars for your personal image. Neat, huh!

You’ll find bigger, better photos of our hotels in the search results and on the hotel detail pages - 1,000 words and all that. They’re pretty.  freakin’.  awesome.

You can also now add dates for when you’ve stayed in a hotel, and the purpose of your visit, in your hotel reviews. Feel free to click “edit review” at the bottom of the reviews you’ve already completed to add this information.

There’s a bunch more stuff, but I’ll let you discover it yourself. I’ll leave you instead with a neat quote from Bill Clinton’s commencement address at Middlebury college this year (Charles’ alma mater). In talking about communities, President Clinton said,

“Every successful community has three things, whether it’s a university, a sports team, a business, an orchestra, a family; you name it. They all have three things: a broadly shared opportunity to participate; a broadly felt responsibility for the success of the enterprise, whatever it is; and a genuine sense of belonging. “

We hope that together, all of us can grow VibeAgent into a strong and compassionate community that lives up to these ideals. Participate, with integrity; Help others, as you would have them help you; and of course, understand that you belong here!

Happy travels.