Free 'social' travel resource ships today

SANTA BARBARA, CALIF. -- Just about every consumer content provider, from gadget magazines to catalogs to maps, has been challenged by "competition" from free online Web sites. The travel guide business is no exception. Now, one major publisher is "putting it all out there," offing all content free (plus tons of Web 2.0 goodies).

Why buy the latest "Rough Guide" or "Lonely Planet" book when you can just go online and search Wikipedia entries, online city guides, travel message boards and blogs and Google Maps?

Recently, a new threat to the printed travel guide book industry has emerged, which involves roll-your-own or customized travel guides that you can print out or have someone else print out for you. The information comes from the Internet, but someone else gathers it for you.

The most well known of these projects is called Offbeat Guides, created by Dave Sifry the founder of Technorati. You give the company some details about your trip, plus about $25, and they'll send you your own personal travel guide. (A print-it-yourself PDF version is about $10.)

My gut reaction is that $25 is too high, and that Dave won't get the kind of volume he would probably need to keep a business going. But without actually trying the product, there's no way to tell -- the site is currently in a closed beta and requires a "super secret invitation code" to try.

So while Offbeat Guides is getting a lot of press and still building the business, another site called Tripwolf is shipping, starting today for the U.S. market. And it looks awesome (see the video at the bottom of this post).

Tripwolf calls itself a Web 2.0 "social travel guide" that "combines professional editorial travel content with user generated content." Rather than "sending away" for a print or PDF travel guide, Tripwolf lets you create your own customized guide of somewhere between 10 and 20 pages. And rather than charging you $25, Tripwolf is free.

Tripwolf is backed by a German company called MairDumont, Europe's largest travel guide company. The site actually contains everything published by MairDumont's many travel guides that cover more than 200,000 destinations and points of interest, according to the company -- and all free.

When you build your personalized guide, you can just drag-and-drop MairDumont's travel guide content for your destination, and augment it with content from Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube and other sites, then print it out and take it with you.

Much of the content is Wiki-fied, meaning that travelers can update and improve it. The destinations on the site are constantly updated with GPS coordinate information.

Tripwolf also boasts Facebook integration and the sharing of advice and travel stories.

They also let you maintain a travel blog that you can share with friends and relatives. No more old-and-busted postcards!

The company also plans an iPhone applications, and the option to book flights and hotel rooms on the site. 

Although it's true that Tripwolf joins a very crowded market that includes TripIt, Take Off Guides, myTripbook, Gusto, TripAdvisor (which recently bought both VirtualTourist.com and OneTime.com), IgoUgo, NileGuide, World66, TravelBuddy and other sites, it's "secret sauce" appears to be comprehensiveness that includes free content from published print travel guides.