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gtrot’s new social booking feature makes it easier than ever for friends to book flights and hotels together!

It’s simple.  If you want to book the same flight or hotel as a friend, just visit his or her profile.  (You can access a friend’s profile directly from the My Friends page.)  You’ll have the option of booking any shared flight or hotel in any upcoming trip.  Clicking the “book” button automatically opens a flight or hotel search with your friend’s booking at the top!

We also pull in similar flights / hotels from Kayak.com and Hotels.com — two of the most trusted brands in online travel — to ensure that you get the best deal available.  That’s just another way we’re making travel easier, cheaper, and way more social.

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 [email protected].

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!

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.