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Imanol Iglesias is starting a social network for travel called Genviajero and has done it utilizing Google’s App Engine platform. I think this is the first site I’ve come across that is being built using the App Engine and I think it would be worth talking about a bit.

As we can see in the video of the presentation of App Engine made by Joaquin Cuenca in the Campus Party, what Google is looking for is to support those web projects that have the most possibilities for growth. If Google provides them with solutions for scalability, then we will have projects with high traffic and both Google and the project will be able to earn more money through advertising.

Here’s how Google App Engine works: the programmer, in this case Imanol, develops the application in Python (the only language available as of now) and uploads it to App Engine to have his web operational. The programmer doesn’t need to worry about databases, servers and other such issues related to the systems. App Engine also permits users to log in to the platform using their Google accounts, so users with existing accounts do not need to register on the web. As I am not a technical guy, I don’t want to go into detail in this aspect. If you want to know more, I recommend this article by Andreas Krohn.

As for Genviajero, I must say that as a social network for travellers, its basic function is sharing information on travel destinations and based on these favourites, make comments, opinions, recommendations, … Images of the sites added to the social network can be viewed on Panoramio, and soon it will allow users to upload their own pictures. On these lines, I think that in a social network like Genviajero, it makes a lot of sense to aggregate the maximum amount of information available related to places like hotels, restaurants, weather information, etc.

A new player enters the market of vertical search engines on travel. It’s called Ulises and it has just been launched.

Ulises offers specific searches for flights (which I believe will be the most used feature), for hotels, for car rentals and for cruises. These options of car rentals and cruises are not available as far as I know in other travel-related vertical search engines developed in Spain.

Of the flight search, I would say that the results page stands out and shows with much clarity the flights found arranged by price, and moreover a comparison table of different airlines, something that helps a lot if the user is not just searching for the best price but also gives priority to the quality of service offered by one airline company compared to the other.

The search engine also has different options of filtering and on the main page, we can find the last flights searched apart from the flights that have been searched the most, which gives us an idea of which are the most interesting destinations for people.

Without doubt, Ulises will be able to compete with the three flight search engines that we already have on the scene, Trabber, Minube and Vuelosbaratos now have another competitor with whom to fight for the users.

Vote for Ulises in Loogic Rank.

Read the original article in spanish.

Online travel agency eDreams just presented the documentation to CNMV to get listed on the stock exchange in the first quarter of 2008 with a valuation of 400 million euros.

After the acquisition of eDreams by a venture capital fund for 153 million euros, there were rumors of the company going public and it seems that now the news is being confirmed. Experience in the hispanic internet shows that wanting to go public doesn’t mean that it will happen, but in this case we hope that it will be so because it could be an important push to the sector.

In 2006, the revenues of eDreams touched 300 million euros and the year before, the profits were 4.7 million euros, which demonstrates the important volume of business related to everything that has to do with the travel sector on the internet.

Besides, eDreams is one of the online travel agencies that is vouching the most for the Web 2.0, which we can see in its community and in the day to day management through Twitter. It’s clear that there’s little connection between the Web 2.0 and going public, but it’s a sign of the company’s evolution and the interest it shows in communicating with its users.

Via Nacho Giral.

More information in Bolsacinco.

Update: Marek Fodor also talks about this and notes that the stock listing will be made in two phases. The first phase will be to generate an exit for the stock of the founders and the venture capital fund, and the second phase will serve to raise capital that could be used for acquisitions or promotional campaigns.

Read the original article in Spanish.