Travel tools - MyGola review

Continuing from my earlier post on reviewing two travel tools, I reviewed MyGola.com as I had promised earlier.

First impressions

The overall look and feel is a lot more contemporary, which I really like. However, I do resent the excessive number of clicks needed. I also had the expectation - maybe due to the contemporary look - that the tool would be more intuitive, which wasn't the case. Maybe it wasn't meant to be, and maybe I was expecting too much. Having said that, there are certainly some unique and positive features about this tool.

Walkthrough of the tool itself

While the website does provide set plans that one could follow, I was more interested in the customisation approach, which also made it comparable with MustSeeIndia.com, which I'd reviewed earlier. 


As I mentioned before, there are options for predetermined itineraries, as well as customised ones. Both can be set based on the number of days planned for the trip. The preset itineraries have further themed options, such as History, Adventure, and Religious, and also have the typical Top Hits type of itinerary. The customisation (create your own trip from scratch) is placed lower down on the page, which could be a little hard to find.



Once you've selected that option, you are asked to provide some basic information - location and days. I did have some input issues with the dates (I couldn't select a 4 day trip at all), but those were sorted out soon.





Once you've done that, the tool does its own calculations, the principles of which are displayed, and if you ask me, makes a very good impression! Once you've done that, you're taken to a page where you could either add more cities, or go ahead with creating a daily plan.



Off I went, to plan my 4 day test trip to Jaipur. First up, selecting the places you want to see. These are categorised under: Restaurants, Hotels, Nightlife, Attractions and Shopping. You can select as few or as many places you want - no restrictions. What I found really good was the option to indicate whether a place was on your DEFINITELY VISIT list or just your MAYBE list.



What was a bit annoying, though, was that the same place came up under different names. Something for the folks at MyGola to work on. Then after a bit more of processing...



...you have your daily planner! Looks something like this:



I've highlighted 3 things in the above image, which I think are useful or important to note. 

(1) The plan can be downloaded as a pdf. Here's what I got...it looks good and reads good too! 

(2) You can view your planner on a map, 



(3) You can use the BOOK option, to book your hotel stay. And that's where things got a bit weird. Firstly, it asked for the dates yet again, along with info on the number of persons, rooms required, and hotel budget.



And then the price options for the high, medium and low category of hotels came as a bit of a shock! 



Thank goodness there were more options (takes you to a third party website for hotel bookings). And once you've decided where to stay, that's about it. You're done. Now for the bookings!!!

Conclusion

I had the following issues (and some more), which I've fed back to the team at MyGola:

  • Repeated entry of dates
  • Repeated locations
  • I'd like to see the MAYBE VISIT items on a sidebar to the planner, so I can add / remove them as needed
  • The tool seems to presume that all visits will be of similar if not identical length 
  • Hotels are considered as places to visit!
  • Some days are more packed than others – probably because grouping of places is by distance 
  • Some hotels appear in two categories (low/medium, or medium/high)
  • No local travel options, and so it isn't possible to calculate the overall price of the trip
  • Bookings need to be made individually for hotel, attractions, transport, etc, and not all of them are on the tool

In all, this is a good tool to help you identify your visit spots and maybe to some extent, plan your days for your trip. The pdf and map views are also definite pluses. However, I find the absence of a comprehensive booking system, the biggest drawback - something that I think MustSeeIndia scores high on. I'm told by the team at MyGola that more enhancements are in the pipeline, so the booking system could well be something to look forward to, in future. Till then, this can serve as a happy replacement for wikitravel.

PS: Images used above are extracts from the MyGola.com website, and all copyrights are owned by them.

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