TripSay blog

The word about TripSay is spreading quickly, thanks to you, TripSay members. In addition to the word of mouth also traditional media has been showing growing interest in TripSay. We were quite happy to answer ‘Yes!‘ when asked to visit Toronto, Canada for a couple of interviews. It was great fun to go tell the TripSay story in a TV studio.

Lights … Camera … Action … The first story to come out was a live Homepage show on CityPulse24 (CTV). And there’s more to come! Hopefully we’ll get the stories on Youtube as well!

Media’s interest and our growing userbase tell the same story: The time to go mass market with the next generation of online travel service is now! The advent of social media and travel business’s transition to online mean that people go to web to look for travel info. People appreciate the value of getting personalized travel tips from friends and likeminded travelers.

TripSay is constantly developing, both in terms of features (more about that in the near future) and userbase. The more members we have, the better we are able to distill the best travel tips and destinations from our huge database. We are glad to say that we have members from around the world already. Way to go!

You know about the terrorist attacks against tourists in Egypt? They pretty much devastated the tourism industry in Egypt. I didn’t think the attacks in the distant past would affect my travels in Egypt at all…

But I was wrong. Traveling between towns in Egypt was like stepping into a cold war spy movie. The roads are blocked with many many checkpoints. At each checkpoint there are a number of policemen with AK-47’s checking the bus. I don’t even remember how many times we had to stop on the 160 miles trip from Hurghada to Luxor. And you are required to have a police escort when driving from town to town. Usually tourists are escorted in a caravan of buses, having one police car leading and another trailing the caravan. If you rent a car on your own, you’re supposed to join such a caravan to drive from a city to another.

The police state feeling continues in the towns. The (heavily) armed tourism police are everywhere: standing on street corners, sitting by the attraction entrances, guarding at the beaches, etc. All hotels have metal detectors at their front door and a number of surveillance cameras.

I don’t feel comfortable seeing so many automatic guns around me. I understand the Egyptian ministry of tourism wants to make travelers feel safe but being stopped multiple times by armed men at shabby road blocks / checkpoints doesn’t quite do the trick for me…

Despite the “protection”, I think the biggest risks for a traveler in  Egypt nowadays is to forget to drink enough water on a hot day or having slow feet when crossing a busy street! It is definitely worthwhile to visit other towns on your trip, as they are quite different. See for example the tips about Luxor.