The other day I got an email from Schmap, a clever service that aggregates user-submitted travel guide details and then ads related photos licensed under creative commons that they find on flickr. They take usage right seriously and seek explicit permission for using photos and fastidiously uphold the posting of author details next to each user-submitted object. (Note to traditional print travel guide industry: better keep your head out of the sand and respond sooner than later.)

In my 20s I suffered from cronic wanderlust and worked and traveled overseas as much as possible. Relying on guidebooks that were out of date the day they were printed was the only option. A trip to Southwest China required buying a 800 page bohemouth only to cut out a fraction that was needed.

I’ve been closely following the state of web-based guides even though I can sit still for much longer periods of times these day. Travelpod is an excellent read/write web site. Mostly unnoticed by American geeks its gained a huge usage base from people actually doing the travelling and wanting to talk about it. The diaries, travel maps and photo galleries are endless.

Schmap, however, strives to be much more of a complete guide full of reviews recommendation, insights and specifics. It’s desktop-based (unfortunately windows only right now) with no web exploring. Everytime you login new updates are immediately downloaded. Currently there are 10 U.S. & European cities and they hope to launch ~30 more this month.

Finally it appears they have full intentions of giving everything away for free, at least for now. It seems a very likely candidate for the freemium model, but I expect they have big expectations of selling city-specific ads (as well as general travel-industry ads) thought the guide. Aggregating local ads in dozens of cities at once is not easy especially for a new guide with an non-traditional publishing format, but with creativity and the right approach they could be selling a lot of inventory within 24 months. Either way this is going to cause a huge disruptance in the budget and 3-star level travel book industry.

Homepage screenshot:

Screenshot of photo usage approval form:

By contacting users to confirm if they can use their creative commons licensed photos they have uncovered an excellent marketing option. Now my flattery and interest has led me to talk about it and pass the word without even having seen on of their (windows-only ;) guides.