A startup website called Groupize.com is attempting to automate the complex and fragmented world of customized group travel, including motorcoaches and other forms of transport, plus hotels, attractions and restaurants.
The site was founded in Gloucester, Mass., by Charles de Gaspe Beaubien, and incorporates EasyBusRental.com, a search and booking site for motorcoach rentals that he launched earlier this year.
Groupize.com enables travel professionals and consumers to shop for group travel products and dynamically create tailor-made itineraries. Groupize.com is launching with 30 destinations in the U.S. and Canada.
"All this content doesn’t exist," said de Gaspe Beaubien. "We’re just out there contracting every group product there is … and we’re loading that up into the system."
He said that the goal is to have between 3,000 and 5,000 group suppliers loaded into the system by the end of 2011.
Ultimately, de Gaspe Beaubien said, suppliers will be able to upload their information themselves, but for now Groupize is uploading all the inventory for suppliers "for consistency reasons."
He has outsourced the actual data entry to another company, which he declined to name.
"The website allows users to shop by collections, by interest. That’s what people do now — they travel for an interest, they travel for a reason," said de Gaspe Beaubien.
The site enables organizers of groups as small as 10 people, or as large as 100, to shop for tours, motorcoaches, attractions, hotels, air, rail, cruises, restaurants, insurance and tour guides.