Witur offers 4 types of search:
Location only: you enter the name of a place and Witur shows you a list with all the trip plans at your selected destination regardless of the type of trip plan
Location and keywords: besides the location, you can enter keywords separated by blank spaces and Witur will return a list of trip plans at your destination that meet your criteria
Keywords only: you enter keywords separated by blank spaces and Witur will return trip plans that meet your criteria regardless of their location. Looking for coastal trips? Just enter "coast" and hit search.
Username: enter the name of a Witur user to get a list of all his/her trips
Witur allows you to choose the language of the results. You can choose English, Spanish, or both.
When you get a list of trip plans, Witur includes information fields to help you understand the results. These fields are:
Professional: when this keyword is present, it means that the trip plan has been entered by a professional travel agency and therefore you will be able to to arrange it directly from Witur.
Quality: Witur uses a proprietary algorithm to calculate the quality of every trip plan. The higher the value, the higher the quality of the trip. For a trip plan to be listed it must score a minimum of 50%
Duration: gives you the duration of the trip
Distance: specifies the distance from your selected destination to the trip plan. The result takes into account the average distance of each stage to your destination
Keywords: indicates the number of keywords that the trip plan contains
Language: if you select "any" for the results language, you will see either a Spanish or an American/British flag to indicate whether the trip plan is written in Spanish or English
Legend: the last field is a colored circle that will help you quickly located the trip plan on the map on the right-hand side
See the following image for an example where we have searched for trips in Barcelona containing the keyword "gothic"
The first result, "Cathedral of the Sea" is a trip plan entered by a professional user, has a quality of 64%, takes 3 hours, is 1Km away on average from Barcelona, meets your search criteria at 100% (1 match out of 1 entered keyword), is written in English, and its legend is red.
The second result, "Visiting Barcelona's Gothic Neighbourhood" is entered by a regular user, has a quality of 76%, takes 5 hours, is 1Km away on average from Barcelona, meets your search criteria at 100% (1 match out of 1 keyword), is written in English, and its legend is yellow.
You have been on an incredible trip that you would like to remember and show to your friends. Yes, you have a lot of pictures but feel that just the pictures are not enough. You would like to write down the timeline of the trip, locate the different stages on a map, write down what you did, and comment on the restaurants, hotels, and museums you liked and the ones you did not. If this is the case, Witur is definitely the tool for you.
Witur offers a very simple interface that will allow you to enter the information of your trip and preserve your memories forever. Furthermore, Witur will automatically rate your trip, and if you score 50% or more, your trip will become part of Witur's database and will be listed in searches. This way, other people can learn from your experience and get the best of their destination.
Entering a trip is very simple:
You start by providing a summary of the trip that includes: name of the trip, brief description, date of the trip, keywords, and a picture.
Then, you enter as many stages a you want. Each stage includes: name, description, location, picture, duration, and as many suggestions as you want (e.g., hotels, restaurants, and museums)
Witur will show you your trip so far with information about the route, quality, and duration. You can edit any of the stages as well as the description at any time
All your trips will appear automatically on the "My Trips" tab, so you can review them at anytime.
Witur makes it easy to get a link to the trip that you can then email to your friends. When you visualize a trip plan, the upper-right corner offers a "control panel" with a number of links that allow you to execute actions based on the trip plan. If you click on the "Send to a friend" link, Witur will popup a dialog with the link to the trip plan. Copy the link and send it to your friends. When they click on this link, they will be directed automatically to the trip visualization page.
Witur allows you to send questions to the people who entered the trips, as well as people who live at your target destination (local experts). When you visualize a trip plan, click on the link next to the author name to send him/her a question. If you want to send a question to a local expert, click on the "Ask local users" link right below the quality field and you will be directed to a panel with a list of users that live near your selected destination. Click on one of the names and write the question.
Witur provides functionality that allows travelers to comment and rate trip plans. This mechanism ensures that the quality of a trip plan is based on real comments from real travelers that are familiar with the trip plan or the location where the trip plan is located. From the trip plan visualization page click on the "Rate this trip" link. This will popup a dialog box where you have to enter the rating as well as a comment for the trip plan.
Witur understands that when a traveler is looking at a specific destination, he/she probably wants to spend most of the time learning about where to go and what to do. Arranging the trip itself can be tedious and time consuming. Witur offers a novel feature to help travelers with this issue: assisted trip arrangement. This feature provides functionality to assist travelers finding and booking the right hotel as well as booking a trip plan with the travel agency that entered it. Finding and booking hotels works with all trip plans. However, booking an itinerary only works with professional trip plans, that is, trip plans that have been entered by specialized travel agencies (trip plans with the keyword "Porfessional" in the list of search results).
Hotel booking: offers a list of hotels
near the destination you are reading about. The hotels are ordered according
to their distance to the target location and you will be able to make a
reservation for your favorite hotel. All hotels have reviews and are ranked
so you can leverage this information to make sure you are choosing the best
hotel. You will find this functionality in the stage visualization page.
There is an option at the "control panel" called "Arrange Trip Plan"
(upper-right corner) that will direct you to a panel below the map that
contains the link that will popup a new window with the appropriate hotels
Trip plan arrangement: allows you to
request additional information or even book the trip plan directly with the
specialized travel agency that entered the trip plan. This feature is only
valid for professional trip plans and is present both in the trip plan
visualization page and the stage visualization page. In the "Arrange Trip
Plan" panel below the map you will find the "Arrange this trip plan" link.
When you click on it, a dialog box will popup requesting your name and
either a phone number or email address and your traveling date (optional).
Witur will send this information to the travel agency and they will contact
you to arrange everything (try it with
these trip plans)
Do you travel so much that you can't find time to sit in front of a computer? Witur has the solution for you: access all existing trip plans from your mobile phone whenever you need them and wherever you are. From your mobile phone enter the following address: http://www.witur.com/mobile. You will find a customized user interface with the same familiar search options.
If you have an account with Facebook you can add a box with all your trips in your profile so your friends can see where you have been and what you have done. Log in to your Facebook account and search for the "My Trips" application. Install it and follow the instructions. If you are already a Witur user, simply enter your email and password and Witur will automatically connect both accounts.
