Kukunu.com is currently in beta deems itself as social travel planning service. Using Kukunu you can build an itinerary across different cities, and plan all aspects of your trip including accommodations, restaurants, and activities.
Kukunu.com is free, and also allows you to sign in using Facebook connect, which immediately pulls your social graph into your travel plans. Attempting to leverage the ‘power of the crowd‘ Kukunu has plenty of triggers that encourage the user to include others in questions, suggestions and concerns. Furthermore, if you are not planning any trips, you can leave your ideas and suggestions to be used by other travelers — to places even, of which you have never actually been.
The play here is for socializing travel. With integration to Facebook and Twitter, Kukunu attempts to pull your friends into your trip planning. The itinerary is sharable, and can be changed seamlessly by all of the travelers involved in the trip. It offers over 300,000 hotels, activities and destinations to choose from — while more are being added every day. Kukunu.com partners with suppliers (meaning businesses) to better the likelihood of better deals for you, the traveler.
Pro’s:
- Facebook integration
- Twitter integration
- Hotel reviews from TripAdvisor
- Discount tool, Search tool
- Socialized travel
Con’s
- Still in beta, young site
- Desire for social travel is unknown
- No noticeable help options
- For a ‘social’ business, they are quite on the social networking front
- Aesthetically bland
Overall the concept is great. However the barrier to entry for a online travel agent is very difficult to crack. If socialized travel can take off, it is likely that the technology and concept behind Kukunu.com would be primed for a buyout from one of the bigger companies. It is a powerful attempt to include your friends into planning your trip, and giving the access to the other travelers to make suggestions and recommendations, however the site and concept are too young for any valid conclusions to be made.
View Comments (1)
Thanks Ryan for the review.
You're quite right regarding the key challenges we'll be facing and I think you might like some of the improvements we're working on right now.
I'll make sure you get an early access to our November release as the social layer in Kukunu will be awesome.