We’d like to share with you the main findings from our recent surveys of Dopplr travellers and analysis of the aggregate travel patterns of the growing Dopplr community around the world. So here, under seven broad headings, is some fresh data:

1. Willing to share travel intention, long before the trip
2. International
3. Independent early adopters of digital technologies
4. Compared to traditional frequent travellers: younger, earn more, travel more
5. Preference for unique hotels
6. For airlines, preference is widely spread
7. Recommendations rule

1. Willing to share travel intention, long before the trip

When people share a trip through Dopplr 2/3 have not yet booked a hotel and 1/2 have not made any travel arrangements at all (e.g. plane or train reservations). Dopplr is of course all about sharing where you will be and the unique places you’ve been. What surprised us is how early in the decision process people share their trips. Dopplr use is clearly part of a larger trend of declarative living – alongside services like Twitter and the status line in Facebook – where Dopplr emphasizes future location and privacy. For an excellent description of this broad phenomenon read Clive Thompson’s “Brave New World of Digital Intimacy.”

2. International

Dopplr may have the most international social graph of any social network. Over half the people on Dopplr share trips with a person from another country. Over 2/3 of the users are from outside of the United States with half of the users coming from Europe, and Asia Pacific growing quickly.

London, New York, San Francisco, Paris and Berlin are the top destination cities. However, as the plot of all Dopplr destinations in 2008 at the very top of this post shows, the tail of destinations is long and covers the entire globe.

3. Independent early adopters of digital technologies

Dopplr users are, no surprise, early adopters of online services with three-quarters claiming regular use of Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter and over half using Flickr or their own blog regularly. They are very independent in terms of making travel arrangements with 3/4 making their travel arrangements themselves either online or by phone.

4. Compared to traditional frequent travellers: younger, earn more, travel more

Dopplr travellers are highly-educated and compared to traditional frequent travellers they are younger, earn more, and travel more. Active travellers on Dopplr made on average 15 trips in the last year. In terms of sectors IT, telecoms, marketing, media and creative industries are over-represented in Dopplr travellers compared to traditional frequent travellers.

Dopplr users are more used to booking directly online with 80% booking directly on an airline website (compared with 30% for traditional frequent travellers).

5. Preference for unique hotels

Dopplr travellers prefer unique travel experiences with over 40% going for boutique hotels when they travel and 25% choosing a trusted chain. As for trusted hotel chains, the top six preferred chains for frequent business travellers on Dopplr were Hilton, W Hotels, Mariott, Starwood, Hyatt and Radisson.

6. For airlines, preference is widely spread

Broadly speaking the digital influencers on Dopplr are highly driven by price and recommendation. They are less loyal than traditional frequent travellers and their preferences for airlines are spread among many more airlines. As an example, for long haul business Dopplr travellers prefer Brittish Airways, Virgin Atlantic, Singapore Airlines, Lufthansa and United Airlines. In terms of airports AMS, SIN and HKG top the list.

7. Recommendations rule

Travellers on Dopplr are highly interested in and influenced by recommendations from their peers, especially for hotels, restaurants and places to see. The chart below shows claimed influence of recommendations on different travel decisions.

And people are increasingly receiving travel recommendations through digital channels, whether it be all-purpose communication platforms like Facebook, Email or Twitter, or newer more focused platforms like Dopplr. Face-to-face is still by far the most popular medium for travel recommendations, so digital platforms have a lot of potential for growth.

In light of the above observations, you can see why we at Dopplr are excited about building the social atlas, a system for making travel data and advice more open and sharable. Many thanks to all of you who have contributed to our research.

Note: The data above is based on two traveller surveys conducted over the last year (the second with m1ndset), m1ndset independent research into international frequent travellers at airports around the world, and analysis of aggregate travel patterns of the Dopplr community. We will be sharing a full version of our research results shortly. If you’re interested in receiving a copy drop us a line at business(at)dopplr(dot)com.

It is our goal to make it easier for you to use Dopplr wherever you want. While we mentioned Twitter briefly in our recent Dopplr update, we wanted to say some more about how you can use Twitter and Dopplr together.

You can add trips easily on Dopplr using a Twitter account

There’s a special Dopplr user on Twitter that is there only to receive messages from you, which then get turned into trips on Dopplr. To use this feature you’ll need to first tell Dopplr your Twitter account. Then, you can send it a message by twittering something like “D dopplr a trip to Helsinki on May 19th until May 23rd”, or you can also use the “@dopplr” prefix if you don’t mind the details being seen in ‘public’ on twitter.

What to say

Start your message with “d dopplr” (to send it in private) or “@dopplr” (so it appears in your Twitter timeline). Make sure to mention a placename and two dates, including the month both times. Use one of these three forms of text to be sure we can understand you:

A trip to Helsinki on May 19 to May 23

At SFO on September 9th. Leaving on September 20th

I’m going to Austin on July 15 for 3 nights

Your Twitter contacts on Dopplr

You can easily check if your Twitter contacts are on Dopplr so that you can share trips with them.

Lastly, remember that the special Dopplr user on Twitter is just a bot. If you want to hear about new developments on Dopplr and the Dopplr team, follow @dopplrhq.

We continue to be surprised, in good ways, by the creative ways people use Dopplr. So here’s a quick shout out to the Oregon (U.S.) State Fair, which puts a “Big Tomato” on the road each year around the state to drum up interest in the fair. This year the organizers used Dopplr to show the itinerary.

Can a plant be a fellow traveller? Unclear, but you can find the mega-veggie’s schedule here — though, sadly, its tour is now complete for this year.

Yesterday I asked what a particular list of English words had in common. Here’s the answer:

Mobile, AL, United States | Page, ND, United States | Nice, France | For, Norway | Name, Mozambique | Union, Philippines | Best, Netherlands | Dollar, United Kingdom | Tours, France | Split, Croatia | Accident, MD, United States | Mile, Tanzania | List, Germany | Central, SC, United States | Deal, NJ, United States | Deposit, NY, United States | Trip, Romania | This, France | Back, United Kingdom | Carry, Haiti | Center, MO, United States | Start, Russia | Kilo, Finland | Purchase, NY, United States | Transfer, PA, United States | Goès, France | Plan, Spain | Media, PA, United States | Sale, Australia | Downtown, PA, United States | Fully, Switzerland | Luck, WI, United States | Normal, IL, United States | Comfort, TX, United States | Call, MO, United States | Local, MO, United States

Every one of these words occurs often in emails sent by the travel industry. And every word is also the name of a place somewhere in the world. Congratulations to commenter Smyles yesterday for guessing most of the connection.

The reason these words are important to us is that they are the “stop” list we use to filter emails before trying to interpret trip information from them. Without this list, we’d see a phrase like “accident insurance” or “for your comfort” and offer you trips to the towns of Accident, For or Comfort.

Quick quiz: what do the following words have in common?

mobile, page, nice, for, name, union, best, dollar, tours, split, accident, mile, list, central, deal, deposit, trip, this, back, carry, center, start, kilo,
purchase, transfer, goes, plan, media, sale, downtown, fully, luck, normal, comfort, call, local

Here’s a clue:

Check back tomorrow for the answer.

As we’ve mentioned before, the Dopplr website assigns a distinct colour to every city in our database. This is all very well, but sometimes it generates a colour that’s a little hard to see against a white background (Stockholm’s colour, for instance, is extremely pale), and I wanted to fix this.

Luckily, the W3C have a draft technique for measuring the contrast between two colours, so now when we generate the city colour we first check it to make sure that it’ll be sufficiently visible against our white background. If it’s not, we darken the colour until the contrast is high enough. This means that we’ll be changing the colours of some cities, but the new city colours will be the same as the old colours, only darker.

This is Eli:

He mailed us and asked:

“I spend quite a bit of time in the winter months (oct – feb) at
McMurdo Station in Antarctica and that time is completely blank in my
dopplr timeline. could you please at least add all the US Antarctic
locations (McMurdo Station, South Pole Station, and Palmer Station).

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE! THANKS THANKS THANKS!”

So we added them to Dopplr!

Hopefully he’ll invite some of the other intrepid McMurdo travellers…

Looking forward to seeing what tips they add…

Our lovely new business cards, originally uploaded by blackbeltjones.

Moo.com kindly let us be alpha-testers to their new business card range.

Of course, we couldn’t resist setting ourselves a technical challenge with the design to try and do something particularly ‘dopplresque’ with them.

Here’s MattB:

I’m particularly happy that Matt [J] made the design in Illustrator, then exported it as SVG, which I templated in Rails and produced personalised editions for each of us based on our travel data, which was then rasterized to PNG (using Batik) to go to print. It’s the future.

He had hoped to be able to give a few of them out at Reboot10, but unfortunately due to illness he’s had stay home.

So instead of making some announcements there this week, we’ll be doing them here on the dopplrblog instead…

Stay tuned!

Flying with Radar Badge on PMOG, originally uploaded by blackbeltjones.

GameLayer’s first product – the Passively-Multiplayer Online Game or “PMOG” launched this month, and we’re very proud to say we’re part of the game-grid.

Well, everything on the WWW is part of the game-grid for PMOG, as you play the game by simply using the web everyday – but advance your score and status in the game by exploring, creating and interacting with other players like you would in massive online game worlds like World of Warcraft.

Status-symbols in the game come in the form of achievement badges, and if you play PMOG and visit Dopplr.com once a week for a month, you’ll get the “Flying with Radar” shield you see above.

PMOG’s philosophy of serious play infecting the web is something we’re all for, and we were very proud to see them reference Dopplr as an example in their recent talk at Futuresonic08 in Manchester, where we were also talking about social tools and cities (slides coming soon!)


Congratulations to our friends at GameLayers on the launch of PMOG, and congratulations in advance to you if you earn a Dopplr PMOG badge!

Many in the Dopplr community are freelancers or small business owners, with networks that span the globe. If you fit that description, we recommend you take a look at Going Solo, a conference made for you that’s taking place in Lausanne, Switzerland in May.

We’ve created a way for attendees to connect on Dopplr by joining a network of travellers associated with the event. You can read more about it on the Going Solo blog, and don’t forget to add your trip to Dopplr if you’re going.

UPDATE: the organisers have kindly given us a discount code for readers of our blog. Get your ticket now at a 33% discount by using this code: DPLRSG83H

It’s first-come, first-served as the code will only work for the first five registrations to use it.