Come Together

What's worse about family reunions: listening to Aunt Rachel's childhood-hardship stories again -- or coordinating everyone's flight arrangements, activity preferences and hotel rooms?

If the organizational drudgery bites most into your enjoyment of family gatherings, online assistance may be the answer. A new type of travel site is emerging to help families and friends coordinate, plan and even commemorate group gatherings such as family reunions, 30th wedding anniversaries and 50th birthday parties.

"We've heard from so many people that [planning a group event] is a very frustrating, time-consuming experience -- so it becomes a burden," says Josh Herst, chief executive officer of TripHub Inc., one company trying to take the pain out of group-travel planning. "We want to make it a good, shared experience."

It's no wonder entrepreneurs are interested. Spending on group leisure travel -- including air, car and hotel, among other expenses, but excluding meals -- will total $51.3 billion in the U.S. in 2008, according to Lorraine Sileo, an analyst at PhoCusWright Inc., a Sherman, Conn., research firm. That's up from $47.2 billion in 2006.

"The industry is waking up" to the opportunity that smaller groups represent, says Henry Harteveldt, vice president and principal analyst for travel research at Forrester Research Inc., a Cambridge, Mass., consultancy.

We decided to profile several of the newest free sites where people can research, plan or chronicle travel for groups of five or more. They all let you save trip plans online, and most offer planning tools for inviting others and even letting people vote on the particulars of the event. Only one site, Groople, allows you to book a trip. But they all have links to online agencies, group-travel packages and travel providers that can help groups with reservations.

On most sites, you need to register -- usually providing no more than a name, email and password -- to access the organizational tools, but information tools are generally accessible to all visitors.

Launched in 2004, the site -- a combination of the words "groups" and "people" -- makes searching for hotels straightforward: You enter your location, dates, number of rooms needed and the type of event you're planning, such as a class reunion or a luxury vacation. Groople then returns a list of hotels and rates ranked according to how they meet the criteria for your event.

The site also allows members of a group to "vote" on their preferences. If you're organizing a family reunion, for instance, you can first narrow your search to two or three hotels and save those choices on the site. Groople then emails you a link that you can forward to family members. When they visit the link, they can vote or comment on the hotels you're considering.

Dave Hinze says he often uses Groople to get discount hotel rates for his Stars & Stripes Tours LLC, a history-tour business in Rolla, Mo., that the 55-year-old retired high-school teacher now runs. "With their purchasing power, they have a lot more influence than me," he says.

Joanne Gustafson, 57, used Groople to plan a trip to see a baseball game in Anaheim, Calif., last fall for 50 co-workers. Ms. Gustafson, who is semi-retired and works part time as a supervisor of ushers and ticket takers at Chase Field in Phoenix, home of the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team, says she completed most of the trip planning online, including getting three rooms for handicapped travelers. But help for the remaining details of last-minute cancellations and additions was available at Groople's toll-free number.

Started in November 2005, the site is something of a hybrid between social networking and travel sites. When registering on the site, users also enter information about places they've visited and would like to visit -- creating an automatic database of travel-information resources.

Users can find recommendations on a variety of group-travel destinations -- such as the world's five best beaches -- and approaches to group travel through online communities organized by theme.

"Friends have...a huge amount of untapped and very valuable information," says Carter Nicholas, chief executive and founder of TripConnect in New York.

Let's say you've decided to throw a retirement party for your wine-connoisseur brother. You want to be near wine tastings, but aren't sure about the ideal location. You could start by looking at the TripConnect profiles of other people to see who has been to a wine destination.

You also could check out the Wine group, one of many groups TripConnect members have formed around various travel interests. (From the home page, click on the Groups tab and then advance to the Wine group.) On the Wine group page, you'll see destinations popular with other wine lovers, along with reviews. To get specific advice, click on the "Ask a Question" button.

Users can create a home page for their event, where details can be posted and updated. Then they can send out invitations that have a link to the home page. Anything listed on the page with a valid address also gets an automatic link to a Google map. Users can decide who has access -- everyone or just invitees -- to the page.

The page also contains an Event Schedule, where users can list planned activities. And it keeps a tally of RSVPs. A blog section allows invitees to post information or suggestions for, say, sharing cabs from the airport or selecting a birthday gift.

Alice Berger, 51, a program analyst for the Defense Logistics Information Service in Battle Creek, Mich., recalls all the emails and phone calls it took to invite some 20 people to a birthday party for her husband. So to help organize a 50th birthday party for her sister-in-law in December, she's using TripHub.

"You can put that latest and most current information in one place and let people go in and check it themselves," she says. "That takes care of the back-and-forth emails and phone calls."

TRIPORAMA

Triporama.com, started about 15 months ago, is designed to "make it easier for people to find a travel provider," says Brian McCracken, chief executive of Triporama Inc. in Tiburon, Calif.

The site's Group Travel Guide offers information about a dozen or so categories, such as Mexico, cruises and golf. In each of these categories, there are four or five tabs to explore, including an overview, trip ideas, deals, travel providers and advice.

Let's say you've decided to meet in Tuscany for a family reunion. From the home page you click on the Group Travel Guide to find the Villa/Vacation Rentals section. From there, you can click on the "advice" tab to see links to a variety of online articles, such as "The Secrets of a Dream Villa Vacation."

The "providers" tab then lists and links to businesses that rent villas, while the "deals" tab lists special group offers. For example, the Southwest Airlines package-vacations division offers a $10-per-person discount for groups of 10 or more who book a vacation package through Southwest Vacations when they mention Triporama.

The site also allows you to store your research, send out invitations and conduct polls. Invitees receive a password with their invitation that gives them access to the site. They can then view information you've saved and make comments. A recently added feature, a Tasks List, lets you organize who is supposed to do what for the event. And invitees can view that as well.

TRIP PLANNER

Finally, once your trip is over, memorializing your event may be one of the best parts of your journey. Yahoo Travel's Trip Planner site (http://travel.yahoo.com/trip) is a place to share photos and stories.

The site, started last July, doesn't have the group planning tools of many other sites -- such as voting, sending invitations or collecting RSVPs -- but you can look at other people's trips for ideas. And others can post notes about your trip once you've put up your photos and commentaries.

Write to Jeanette Borzo at encore@wsj.com.