We’ve been hard at work these past few months developing innovative new features to make your next trip easier, cheaper, and way more social!

Flight and hotel booking
You can now book flights and hotels anywhere in the world directly on gtrot. We partnered with Kayak and Hotels.com to bring you the largest selection of flights and hotels at the lowest prices. And we built one of the fastest and most user-friendly search interfaces available on the web. Try it for yourself!

Automatic trip sharing
Anytime you book a flight or hotel through gtrot, we automatically add your itinerary to the appropriate trip on your gtrot profile. That makes it easy for you to share not just the cities you’re visiting, but also where you’re staying and how you’re getting there.

Social booking features
When your friends visit your gtrot profile, they can book your same flight or hotel with the click of a button. Planning group trips has never been easier!

Better privacy settings
You have complete control over what information you share and with whom you share it. You can hide your bookings, particular stops, and entire trips. You can also block individual Facebook friends from accessing your information.

And there are more features on the way! Next week we’re launching a cab-sharing tool for our college users (just in time for spring break), which will help students find peers with similar flight times for shared cabs to the airport. We’re also developing a number of additions to the “my friends” page. Send any feedback and suggestions to contact@gtrot.com.

Finally, we need your help to keep growing. Talk to your friends about booking and sharing their spring break plans on gtrot.com, and post links to the site in your Facebook status! Thanks and happy travels!

The New York Times travel blog, In Transit: A Guide to Intelligent Travel, picked up the gtrot launch, posting this nice piece about the site!  Tanya Mohn writes, “There are Web sites for sharing car rides, booking tickets and, of course, social networking. Gtrot, a Web site that launched today, plans to combine them all.”  The post emphasizes the booking features, which will allow users to find flight and hotels, share cabs and rides, and then automatically share their travel plans with friends.

These features are coming soon, and will be rolled out incrementally over the next six weeks – all in time for the Thanksgiving holiday.  In the meantime, take a minute to record all of your past trips and upcoming plans, and have fun exploring your friends’ travels.  Stay tuned for updates!

This morning we launched the beta version of gtrot!  The launch version of the site makes it easier than ever to track your trips and share your travel plans with friends.  And because we use Facebook Connect, you can log into gtrot using your Facebook information – no registration necessary – and immediately connect with other users in your Facebook social network.

Try it out! Enter your past travel information, and then explore your friends’ trips – see where they are, where they’ve been, and where they’re going.  We make it simple: On the “My Friends” page, you can filter aggregated trip data by friend, city, or date to answer questions like, What are my friends doing for spring break? Who else will be in Montreal next week? Where is my roommate going this summer? Which of my friends has been to Paris? In a matter of seconds, you can find the holiday hotspots, get advice from friends who have been to your destination, and locate friends with overlapping plans.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll launch the booking features that will make gtrot.com the one-stop shop for everything travel.  We’ll soon offer traditional tools for booking flights and hotels, and social tools to help students share cabs to the airport and rides to/from campus.  These tools will be seamlessly integrated with the current interface, making it even easier to share your travel plans with friends.

We’re glad to have you as our very first gtrotters!  We hope you enjoy using gtrot and sharing it with friends.  We’ll be in touch over the next several weeks as we roll out additional features, and please send us your feedback so that we can make the gtrot user experience even better!

We’re launching gtrot.com in one week with a simple goal in mind:  giving all travelers – and college students especially – the information and tools they need to arrange their trips and make the most of their travel experiences.

On gtrot.com, you find the cheapest flights and hotels in seconds, and then use our “share a cab” feature to find taxi-buddies for your trip to the airport.  Driving home instead?  Then use our simple ride-sharing feature to catch a ride home, saving money while reducing the environmental costs of holiday travel.  We help you manage and edit these arrangements on your own travel page, complete with an interactive academic calendar and travel map (showing everywhere you’ve been and places you’re going).

More importantly, we make it easy to explore your friends’ trips and share your own.   Our innovative sharing interface allows you to search aggregated trip data by friend, holiday, date, or city, giving you answers to questions like:  Where are my friends going for Spring Break? What is my cousin doing this Thanksgiving? Who else will be in Montreal in mid-June?  Which of my friends has been to Paris and can give me some travel tips?

It’s just that easy to explore your friends’ trips, find the holiday hotspots, and locate friends with overlapping plans.  Because we use Facebook Connect, you can log into gtrot using your Facebook information – no registration necessary – and immediately connect with other users in your Facebook social network.  And don’t worry:  simple privacy settings let you choose how your information is shared.

Easy, cheap, social, and green.  That’s the way travel should be.

Hey there, it’s Alexa again! Sorry we went M.I.A for a while, we really didn’t come upon another computer during the rest of our trip. So I’m writing to you from Margaux’s room in good ol’ Jersey.

We last left off searching for the John Lennon wall. Interestingly enough, Prague residents don’t know where the wall sits, some say it’s a myth, some say there never was such a wall, some simply don’t understand what we were asking. The wall is a great tribute to the Beatles, with quotes and song lyrics scribbled all over the wall. It also carries some political statements, love notes and personal drawings all dedicated to either John Lennon himself, the Beatles or another famous artist.

Our search proved to take the better half of our evening so instead of anything crazy, Margaux and I went straight to a movie theatre to see Harry Potter! We just couldn’t resist seeing our favorite wizards, especially in such a foreign place… it made it a little more magical knowing we’d walk outside into the “City of A Thousand Spires.”

We left Prague the next morning for another long train ride to Krakow, Poland. The train ride was…. a train ride. Luckily there weren’t any crazy drunk Germans or singing Czech men in our cabin this time. We arrived to a beautiful old city, which easily became our FAVORITE of the small cities we visited. Our hostel was unbelievably clean, modern and cozy, with dark wood floors and rich colored bedding. Even the owners were gracious and enjoyable, two young girls… maybe in their late 20s. They actually suggested two restaurants, one of which we ate at, the other of which was too crowded to get in to (obviously an indicator of their quality).

Our main purpose of visiting Krakow was to visit Auschwitz, about an hour outside of the central train station in Krakow. The experience was something not to be missed. It was a great learning experience and an emotionally draining day.

Though Krakow is mostly known for its convenient location to the concentration camp, the city is a gem of its own. The old city square is full of restaurants, hotels and street performers. Krakow seems to be a very young town, with couples and small groups of people who are all looking to have a good time. There are club promoters walking around the city, with free drink specials and guaranteed entry. The whole city is spotless, the cobble stones are all straightened out and easy to walk on, and the Zloty makes everything SUPER cheap! No really, Margaux and I had a three course meal for $20 each, including tax and tip. Seriously, GO TO KRAKOW!