Travel Planning Gets Personal: Utrip Launches Utrip 1.1 Platform

SEATTLE, WA, February 20, 2013 (Press-News.org) Utrip (www.utrip.com), a revolutionary online platform for authentic, personalized travel planning, announced today that it launched Utrip 1.1, showcasing a suite of new features and destinations to enhance users' trip planning experience.

"We are excited about the reception of Utrip so far," said Gilad Berenstein, CEO and Founder of Utrip. "We have been receiving great press coverage and extremely positive feedback from customers and travel experts alike, but we are always striving to improve the Utrip experience. We are thrilled to announce that Utrip 1.1 will include a number of new European destinations and new features, taking another big step on our journey to reinvent the leisure travel experience."

With Utrip 1.1 travelers can plan multi-city trips and discover the perfect getaway to Italy and Spain, in addition to Utrips' 12 original European destinations (Paris, London, Dublin, Nice, Monaco, Amsterdam, Berlin, Munich, Barcelona, Rome, Venice, and Prague). With the new interface travelers will be able to easily design their own unique trips to climb the Duomo in Florence, or share a carafe of sangria with a new friend met at one of the hidden tapas bars in Madrid, and for the adventurous souls Utrip will help you plan a ski trip to the Dolomite Mountains just outside of Bolzano, or find you the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience surfing in Lisbon. Several new destinations will be released each week after today's launch and users will be able to design their dream vacations to a greater number of Italian and Spanish towns.

Since the July 2012 beta launch, Utrip has continued to drive innovation in the personalized travel-planning sphere. Utrip 1.1 will expand on that success, introducing a new set of tools and features including Featured Trips, one-of-a-kind itineraries crafted by experts in various fields from around the globe. Be it the Italian Chef from the traditional trattoria in Florence, or the experienced local tour guide who knows Vienna like the back of her hand. Utrip has initiated partnerships with leading tour companies, content providers, and travel discovery engines to create itineraries that are tailored to travelers with specific interests in mind. This is similar to the classic trip-planning process offered by Utrip, but instead of creating a completely personalized vacation from scratch, users can browse through the Featured Trips and choose an itinerary designed by an expert. These itineraries highlight a specific aspect of their travel destination that they are highly passionate about. For example the Rome culinary Featured Trip will take foodies to some of the best Italian restaurants, local markets, and cooking classes to sample the freshest pasta to be found in the city. With relevant, authentic suggestions from Utrip's global network of local experts, users can then further customize the Featured Trip based on their additional interests and travel budget.

Moreover, the new release will include major improvements to the evolutionary algorithm (AI 1.1). The Utrip team has spent months advance testing the Utrip site, with the goal of identifying which additional needs Utrip should address to better serve its users. Some important developments include the grouping rule. Utrip added "grouping" into its secret sauce and made changes to the geolocation optimization engine to help travelers discover new destinations and rediscover their favorite destinations with the most authentic itineraries and logical routes to make the most of their adventures.

In addition to Featured Trips and ameliorations in Artificial Intelligence, stunning, high quality images and original content hand-curated by the Utrip team will ensure that an enjoyable trip planning experience is the beginning of a user's travel adventure. Since launch Utrip's goal has been to create an impeccable travel planning service, and they accomplish this by having experts on the ground review each activity and dining venue to ensure it provides accurate, current, and helpful information to travelers.

Utrip.com is an interactive travel platform that allows users to plan, purchase, and share personalized travel experiences all in one place. The web start-up, founded in 2011, and headquartered in Seattle, WA aims to give every person the opportunity to discover the world for themselves. Utrip's founding team is comprised of Gilad Berenstein, Edan Shahar, Yair Berenstein, and Bill Ritchey. Through their combined years of travel, technology and business experience, the Utrip team is now playing matchmaker between travelers' personal interests and expert, first-hand knowledge of destinations around the world. To learn more about Utrip or to plan your next adventure, visit http://www.utrip.com.