GeckoGo

Geckogo.com is a collaborative travel planning resource for independent travelers. Designed for travelers who do not wish to travel as part of a group, the site has user-contributed content about travel destinations all over the world. The site also mixes social networking with travel information, with profiles, friends, messaging, user-contributed content such as tips, guides and information about destinations, and community forums. Users get points for sharing information about places they’ve been. The site has a convenient top menu bar for navigation. The menu bar includes tabs such as Home, which brings up the Geckogo home page. The Destination page allows you to search for destinations based on their interests, such as scuba diving or visiting museums. The Tips page consists of user-contributed tips for various destinations. The Answers page allows users to post questions about destinations to be answered by other users. The Contribute page is where users can add their favorite destinations to the site. Users can choose to add a Travel Tip, Sites and Attractions, Restaurants and Cafes, Lodging, Nightlife or Other Resources for a particular destination. The Services page provides convenient search utilities for Hotels, Insurance, Flights and Travel Guides. The Travel Guides page has a selection of Bradt Travel guides for sale for many popular destinations. The Community page gives access to the site’s forums, which include General, Travel Deals, Tours and Tour Operators, Volunteering and Working Abroad, Sustainable Travel, Off Topic and Feedback and Bugs. The My World page is the user’s home page, and gives access to their Profile, Friends, Favorites, and Messaging. Geckogo.com was founded in 2007 by a group of avid travelers, including Aaron Chow, Eric MacKinnon and Pokin Yeung. The site has undergone steady growth since launch, and currently serves tens of thousands of unique monthly visitors. The site has a current Alexa page rank below 75,000. The site is done in partnership with Bradt Travel Guides. Competition to Geckogo.com comes from the major travel sites such as Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity. In contrast to these sites, the focus of Geckogo is on the destinations, rather than searching the web for deals on travel and lodging. Geckogo offers some unique user-contributed content about most destinations that cannot be found on the major travel sites. Geckogo is best for researching what to do and where to stay in a particular destination, while the major travel sites are better for finding deals on travel and lodging. The Geckogo.com site has a clean and uncluttered look and feel. Navigation is intuitive and page loads are quite responsive. The interface for adding content is user friendly and there are convenient search utilities for most areas of the site. There is no advertising displayed on the site. Registration to Geckogo.com is free and is not required to view most of the content on the site. Registration is required to contribute content, have a profile, favorites, and friends and to participate in the community forums. The registration process asks for first and last name, email address, password and gender. Users can optionally add the cities they have visited to earn extra points, and upload a photo for their profile. Validation of the email address is required. Registration to Geckogo.com is free and there is no premium membership offered to the site. Geckogo.com is recommended to independent travelers worldwide. There is a wealth of information about many popular as well as out of the way destinations to be found on the site. Content is growing daily, as the site adds users and existing users add more content. The site is recommended as a resource to anyone who is planning to travel to a destination alone, and not as part of a group or tour.