Steffen, Co-Founder of tripwolf.com, recently met with Francis Tapon, an avid traveler from San Francisco who can’t stop what he calls “the beast.” He is a knowledgeable hiker, and has written a book about the Appalachian Trail. He is already researching for his second travelogue!

*Francis, you are a passionate traveler - when did you first get itchy feet and discovered your travel bug?

“I was born with a travel bug — it’s in my genes. My Chilean mother and French father immigrated to America at an early age. My dad’s business involved constant trips to South America. By 13 years old, I had already been to six countries. However, I didn’t become conscious of my love for travel until I was 22 and traveled for 75 days throughout Western Europe. At that point, the travel bug became a travel beast.”

*What has been your biggest adventure so far?

“Becoming the first person to yo-yo the Continental Divide Trail (CDT). I hiked from Mexico to Canada, and back, along the continental divide. I walked over 9,000 kilometers of mountains in less than seven months. I slept in the woods every night, sometimes in the snow and I went 45 days without a shower. So nowadays I rarely complain about much when I travel.”

*You are currently out and about on the road again - where are you going this time?

“I’m back in Eastern Europe for at least 6 months. I have no set plan, except that I will revisit Russia, Poland, Bulgaria, and Moldova — all countries I felt I didn’t spend enough time in last time I visited. I’ll also make a special trip to little known part of Russia called Kaliningrad.”

*Tell us about your greatest experience on the road meeting other travelers.

“In 2004 I took a ferry from Helsinki to Tallinn and met Maiu Reismann, an Estonian traveler who was heading back home. By the end of 90 minute boat ride, she invited me to stay with her family and showed me around Estonia. Eventually, she hiked with me over 4,200 km on the Pacific Crest Trail. Who would believe such a brief encounter would yield all that?”

*You have published a book and DVD about hikes - gives us a little insight - what’s the story and what are the next publications you are working on?

“The DVD shows 630 photos and videos about my CDT adventure. It gives you an idea what such a crazy trip entailed. My first book: “Hike Your Own Hike: 7 Life Lessons from Backpacking Across America” is about the lessons I learned from backpacking 3,500 kilometers on the Appalachian Trail. I donate half of my book royalty to the National Scenic Trails in the United States, so it’s nice to buy it even if you’re only mildly interested.”

*If you want to find out more about Francis, his book, DVD, current adventures and upcoming publications.
…check his profile on tripwolf here.
…check out his website and subscribe to his newsletter here.

Adena/tripwolf

Hey Tripwolfers!!

We’ve launched a new contest! The winner of which will receive a signed lithograph of Dido’s newest album and a copy of the CD. Five runners up will also receive a copy of Safe Trip Home!!

It is super easy to enter the contest. All you have to do is submit an original photograph that falls into one of three categories:

• Last photo before heading home from traveling;
• Best travel photo; and,
• Best adventure photo.

On January 15, 2009 a judges panel made up of tripwolf and RCA Label Group staff will pick the winner and runners up.

To check out the competition and submit your own photographs go to: http://tripwolf.com/en/page/competition/dido

More information about the album and links to exclusive videos and sound bites are available on the competition page!

Can’t wait to see your amazing photographs!

Happy Happy Holidays! See you in the New Year!!

Best, Maria

tripwolf / maria

Paris is well known for being probably the most romantic city on the planet. Yet the only thing I noticed was that it’s pricey when I was there last time a couple of years ago. Again, in a couple of weeks, when Lea and I will be at Le Web we looked for an affordable but chic modern Hotel with - obvoiusly - Wifi.

We really had to search the entire web, including tripwolf, until we found out about Mama Shelter via a Next Web’s Blog post. They offer reasonably priced rooms with gorgeous interior and to the geeks adjusted room settings: iMac instead of TV, high speed Wifi, etc.

Have a look at those rooms and mouthwatering interiors by yourself and start booking your stay now.

lukas / tripwolf vienna soon in paris

Last week Alex and I went to PhocusWright in Los Angeles, the online travel industry’s most important conference. It was great to hear the speeches of Expedia’s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, Kayak’s CEO Steve Hafner and, of course, Tripadvisor’s CEO Steve Kaufer - our big competitor, even if we are probably still flying under his radar.

tripwolf was there in true start-up mode: While our much better financed American competitors like NileGuide, PlanetEye, Triporati or Travelmuse paid nearly 10,000 dollars each to hold a 10-minute-presentation and probably stayed at the overpriced conference hotel, Alex and I crashed on the floor of a friend’s place in the cool Echo Park neighborhood and sometimes shared one ticket to get into the venue. Ironically, it was a guy from Lonely Planet who sneaked us in - another big competitor who might not have noticed us yet

At the conference it became clear once again how competitive the field is that we entered: A lot of the travel start-ups have very similar concepts. Stephen Joyce (who presented his very cool technology company Rezgo.com) even calls it the “the Battle of the Trip Planners“.

For now, as he points out, tripwolf is in the lead, together with uptake. Naturally, this makes us very proud! My bet is that uptake will also make a big impact down the road: Their take on Search Engine Optimization is very smart.

A “thumbs up” also goes to the gracious guys from TravelMuse who sat down for a chat and took a picture with us. The atmosphere was much more pleasant than in our meeting with Tripsay, a Finnish competitor we met at a conference in San Francisco last spring: Those guys looked as if they wanted to bite our heads off…

It was great also to finally meet all those bloggers in person who we got to know virtually over the last few months: Claude Benard from Hotel i Tour, Tim Hughes from The Boot, Stephen Joyce from TourismTechnology.rezgo.com , Kevin May from Travolution, Jeb Buhler from BuhlerWorks and Sean Keener from BootsNAll.com.

We brought back a full bag of partnerships from LA. We will announce over the coming weeks. And we are already looking forward to sneaking into the conference again next year!

Sebastian, tripwolf team

Last week, tripwolf’s founders Sebastian Heinzel and Alex Trieb, attended PhoCusWright 2008 Conference. PhoCusWright is the largest travel conference in the world. For a week, the top minds in the industry gather to discuss the future of travel. If you want to follow a bit of what was going on there, check out people’s tweets.

After Monday morning’s innovation summit, Sebastian (tripwolf’s CEO) was interviewed by Breaking Travel News. Check it out!!

Awesome news this Monday morning! tripwolf has partnered with HotelsCombined.com to integrate hotel price comparison into your tripwolf experience!

What this means for you–next time you are planning a trip, whether you are looking for a town or a specific hotel, you will be able to enter your desired dates and poof! hotelscombined.com will scour the web searching 30 of the top hotel booking sites such as hotels.com and priceline and will then tell you, right there on tripwolf, which site is offering the lowest price! You just click the book now button and you will be taken to that site where your information is logged and all you have to do is click buy!

Here on tripwolf, we are always looking for new ways to save you time and money on your next trip. We hope you enjoy this new feature! Please let us know what you think!!

Have a great week

-Maria

ps. if you want to read the official press release, check it out on tripwolf’s press page.

No matter how you strap-in, there’s no denying the snow sport season is nigh. Though most have yet to see a single flake, ski fever has already set in! Whether it’s snow parks and half-pipes you are looking for, rolling white peaks against blue skies, or an untouched après ski atmosphere, tripwolf will point you in the right direction.

Two weeks ago, Europe started its season with the Mondail du Ski and Snowboard.  Beginning on October 25th and 26th, Les-Deux-Alpes, a resort in France’s Southern Alps, was packed with spectators. The best skiers and riders from around the world were there to compete in events like “Best Trick,” “Ollie-Limbo,” and “Freestyle.”

Check out our special snow theme page and find out where you should plan your next ski trip.  We have highlighted some of the world’s best places to ski or ride, but don’t take our word for it - take a trip and see for yourself!

- Adena/tripwolf

As already announced by Lukas, tripwolf will be represented at the LeWeb conference next month. I, myself (Lea) will join him and together we’ll try and cover as much as possible from Paris.

The blogs where we’ll be covering live are:

tripwolf blog US

tripwolf blog DE

123people blog US

123people blog DE

123people blog FR (coming soon)

vanilleah

zinnaglism

The video was our first try with our HD camera and unfortunately our sound and ambient settings were, well, let’s call it suboptimal, but we will improve our skills in term of video blogging until LeWeb…

Illegal track crossing on the OEBB, Austria’s railways, has resulted in 15 casualties this year! That’s more than than the OEBB has recorded in the last six years, according to Thomas Berger, spokesperson for the OEBB.

So, what’s different? Have people just stopped paying attention while crossing rail tracks?

Thomas Berger has already come up with a possible reason: each year, more and more people listen to music while travelling. With music blasting in their ears, they are less likely to notice a train rushing towards them and therefore are at a higher risk for getting run over. “It came to light that some of the casualties had earphones plugged in at the time when they were hit,” says Thomas Berger.

Who would have thought that music would turn into a common cause of death someday?! After a crazy lawsuit, will warning stickers be attached to our new iPods and iPhones: “Warning, listening to music might cause fatal accidents” or “Listening to music can damage your life and interrupt public transportation”?!

So, watch out for those trains!! Don’t listen to music when on the move or if you have to- simply: don’t cross rail tracks without looking and listening first!

Maria/tripwolf this post has been translated (thanks Lea!) and edited (go me!). The original post can be found here.