The downside of this successful adaptation is the amount of information available—it’s so extensive, with a plethora of service providers, stakeholders, and intermediaries, that it has become particularly difficult for internet users to quickly find the right information.
As a result, a good deal of time and patience is essential for planning vacations tailored to one’s tastes and budget, in the desired destination. And this comes without any guarantee of success, especially since none of these sites offer all the ingredients necessary for a successful trip: transportation, accommodation, climate, restaurants, bars, places to visit, beaches or nightclubs, all of which must be researched on different sites before piecing together the puzzle of one’s upcoming vacation. This doesn’t even account for all the information that helps us better understand, get to know, and appreciate a country: local literature or celebrities, gastronomy or sports activities…
Leading travel web portal
Capitalizing on the gaps in web-based tourist information, Bigsbi is a travel portal site where all the necessary information for planning a trip is found. This brand-new site aims to become the leading travel portal on the Francophone internet by gathering all practical information and referencing all sites that allow direct access to the sought-after information. Bigsbi has thus benefited from the vacuum created on the web by the juggernaut of commercial sites, where sales websites have prioritized product info and commercial transactions, at the expense of editorial and informative content on their pages.
In addition to extensive information and indexing work done by its teams, as well as an airfare comparator, Bigsbi.com leverages the participatory nature of Web 2.0, enriched by testimonials and good addresses that internet users can add.
“Bigsbi.com is a neutral and independent site, designed to concentrate qualitative information about travel worldwide and make it accessible to the general public, as well as to certain professional users, such as travel agents,” explains Philippe Reibec, founder and CEO of Bigsbi. Our mission is to facilitate access to tourist information and to share it. On Bigsbi.com, you find the sites that users would have had to search for manually, one by one, in both French and international search engines. Moreover, Bigsbi.com adheres to the principles of web 2.0, allowing any reader to contribute in each category.”
If Bigsbi is just starting and will be enriched in the coming months, it already boasts more than 9,000 pages, 90,000 active links to airlines, hotels, tour operators, bars, restaurants, or nightclubs from over 350 countries and regions worldwide, and several thousand photos.
Simplicity and efficiency could be the watchwords for Bigsbi.com, as the site’s presentation is clear and navigation is easy. This portal is neutral and independent, and commercial criteria do not influence the display of information.
Bigsbi.com does not just offer all the necessary information for trip planning. Still on the left of the homepage, “Move” provides access to “City Guides” which offer a selection of restaurants, bars, and clubs in major cities around the world. These choices are never commercial but are made by cross-referencing various sources of information that feature addresses that are lesser-known yet relevant. Neither grand luxury nor budget pensions, but always well-placed addresses that might interest the average French traveler, with charm and value for money criteria. And, of course, they have a website.
“Bigsbi.com aims to become an alternative to Google or other search engines, where information is diluted and drowned in hundreds of sites often only remotely related to the searched topic,” justifies Philippe Reibec. “If you type ‘hotel in Venice’ into a search engine, you end up with 250 pages and more than an hour to find the hotel that matches your taste and budget!”
No other website until now offered such comprehensive information about Travel. Bigsbi.com, with its practical information coupled with a qualitative selection of good addresses and its forum allowing readers to exchange their tips, is promising a bright future. Travel-savvy internet users have dreamed of it, Bigsbi.com has made it happen!
