Jason Dowdell, who writes the excellent Marketing Shift blog, recounts his experiences with his guide for a recent family vacation. His take?

Once you’ve finished answering the 5 questions, which takes 2 - 4 minutes tops, then you’re presented with an outline of the customized travel guide created specifically for you. You can click on each of the chapters and get a preview of the information contained in it and now you can even add your own chapter… this is great if you’re planning a trip for your family and want to make some notes and would like to send everyone in the family an official “Dowdell Family 2008 Vacation Guide” complete with rules and prizes. I’m only partially joking but it is quite neat.

In the version I used back in June I did find that there were a few blank pages in the printed version of the guide that arrived at our house as well as the pdf version but the guide was quite nice.

Thanks, Jason! 

He did have some great recommendations for us as well:

One thing I wish it had was a listing of all of the grocery stores in the area. No matter where we go on vacation to as a family, the first place we hit is the local grocery store and if that information was automagically generated in the guide it would be superb. There are many other features I’d like to see in it such as iPhone integration for the “top 10 things we MUST do on vacation” in order to avoid arguments 2 days after being on vacation so that mama gets to do her top 2 items and papa gets to do his and the girls can do theirs. All in all, I think this is a solid product with some great features and I think Dave is doing the right thing by taking it slow and not rushing this baby out into full blown production just yet.

Well, color us tickled, I do believe that we’re blushing. Jason’s entire review is up on his site, and I must say, it was a very nice way to start the morning.

There’s lots more good stuff coming down the pipeline - if you haven’t signed up for the private beta yet, c’mon over and sign up. Testers are let in on a first-come, first-served basis, and with some of the big changes coming, we’re really going to be relying on our beta testers to help us to really get things right. 

Tags: beta, dowdell, jasondowdell, marketingshift, review

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 at 8:58 am and is filed under blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.