Why All The Sudden Pinterest?

If you’ve been in hibernation this winter, or traveling in some remote location with no internet access, then perhaps you haven’t heard of Pinterest.  For the rest of us its been impossible to ignore as its the hottest thing since Paris Hilton ignited a media frenzy oh so many years ago.

UPDATE 2: Referral traffic from Pinterest continues growing rapidly and is approaching 1,000/day.  Some of the categories people are pinning it under include Good Cheap Ideas, All Things Fun and Free, Being Frugal and Vacation Ideas.

Daily referral visits to Cost2Drive.com from Pinterest

So what has people so excited about Pinterest that some in the media claim it represents a valid threat to Facebook?  Is it the beautifully simple design combined with the stunning images that people are pinning?  Or is it the viral hooks that make it easy to share through social media.  Or perhaps it satisfies an innate need in all of us to organize our desires (as in bucket lists) and pinning images is so much more fun than typing text?

Browsing Pinterest Images for Road Trips

I’m not exactly sure why Pinterest has taken off the way it has, but some other similar bookmarking services such as de.li.cious and StumbleUpon have seen rapid growth in the past.  Regardless of the reason, every social media pundit on the planet is sounding the alarm that if you run a consumer business you’d better get plugged into Pinterest ASAP lest you get left behind as stories are already circulating about Pinterest driving enormous volumes of traffic to sites.

As for us, we were struggling to find a reason why someone would pin Cost2Drive on Pinterest and so were very pleasantly surprised to find people are already doing just that as yesterday we notice 23 people had pinned the site under the category of Smart Ideas.

Pinterest pins on Cost2Drive.com

Maybe those pundits are right.  Rest assured we’ll be taking a closer look into Pinterest.  If you’re still struggling with what Pinterest is all about, Business Insider has an excellent tutorial where you can learn more.

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Preparing for Oilmageddon

Kuwait Oil Fires 1991 (US Air Force)

Panic Sets In as $4 Gas Prices Begin Appearing Across the US

Back in February of last year there was growing concern that unrest in the Middle East would result in record gas prices come the peak summer driving season, a scenario that nearly occurred as gas prices approached the $4 record set in the summer of 2008 but fell back after peaking at $3.90 in May.

We may not be as lucky this year as gas prices are well ahead of where they were in February of 2011, and $4 gas prices have already been spotted across the continental US in places like New York, Chicago and several locations in California.

Many analysts feel gas prices will exceed $4 a gallon across the US as early as this spring and reach as high as $4.50 by the peak summer months, possibly even $5 if tensions continue to build with Iran.  The press has picked up on this in a big way especially as it factors into the upcoming presidential election.

Not surprisingly, visits to our popular fuel calculator app are soaring as consumers grow increasingly concerned about high gas prices and how they will impact things like upcoming vacations, commuting costs or car purchases.  In fact January visits to Cost2Drive were more than double January 2011 and up 25% from December, and so far February visits are 20% higher than January.

But we’re not resting on our laurels, we’re getting ready to launch a whole new version of Cost2Drive.com with some great new features and a much improved visual design that we’re certain will delight our most fervent users.

Stay tuned for some news of the launch which we’ll be rolling out in the coming weeks.  Meanwhile, we’ve recently enhanced our mobile app so if you have an iPhone check out the Cost2Drive iPhone app and never again wonder what it will cost to drive places.

Happy Driving!

Gas Prices the Biggest Turkey This Thanksgiving

On Track to be Highest on Record for Holiday Season

Heading into the 2011 holiday season its beginning to look like getting a lump of coal for Christmas might not be such a bad thing as it can at least be converted into fuel for electric vehicles like the Volt and Leaf.  Absent that, or a dramatic end-of-year retreat in fuel prices, we’re all going to be paying record amounts to drive home to visit family as gas prices are at historic highs for this time of year.

Weekly Retail Gas Prices: 1990 to Present (US Energy Information Administration)

Looking at the above chart of average weekly retail gas prices from 1990 to the present one can clearly see the two spikes in 2008 and then again this past summer.  At first glance it appears that this year’s trend mirrors that of 2008, with gas prices rising rapidly heading into the summer months only to be followed by steep declines in the fall.  However on closer inspection it turns out this is not the case.

During the 2008 spike a record high price of $4.11 a gallon for regular grade gasoline was reached the week of July 7th, a price which subsequently cratered to nearly half that amount by the first week of November.  This year’s trend has been quite different with the peak price being reached much earlier in the year (May 9th) and the seasonal drop-off much less dramatic as gas prices are now only 14% below this year’s peak price of $3.97.

Taking a look at the historical price of gas for the first week of November  reveals that gas prices are 22% higher than they were heading into the holidays last year and at the highest price ever for this time of year.  This despite the fact that the Arab Spring is far behind us and the removal of Qaddafi from oil-producing Libya is no longer in doubt.

So what does this mean for gas prices heading into 2012?  Although the US Energy Information Service doesn’t see a return to the near $4 peak we saw earlier this year, some analysts disagree.   “I think we will see prices in 2012 that will break … records” said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst for the Oil Price Information Service.

Don’t be caught off guard by high gas prices this holiday season.  Before heading home for the holidays be sure to check out the Cost2Drive website or our new Cost2Drive iPhone app to see what it will cost to get there based on current gas prices along your route.  It will also help you save money by locating the cheapest gas at refueling points and displays the cheapest airfare so you can see if it will be cheaper to drive or fly home.

Happy Driving!

Atlas Hurled

Something Unsettling as Gas Prices Reach Historic Highs

Earlier this year a new movie version of the famous Ayn Rand novel Atlas Shrugged was released that depicted the US economy in a disastrous state by 2016 with gas prices at $34 per gallon.  This no doubt unsettled the car owners in the audience who were already being pummeled by soaring gas prices for the second time in 3 years, and as unlikely as the above  nightmarish scenario is, there’s no question that the persistence of +$3 gas prices is taking a serious toll on the constitution of consumers.

This became more evident last week with the release of a research report from the New America Foundation titled The Price-Induced Energy Trap.  The report argues that consumers are in an “energy trap” because their ability to effectively respond to rising gas prices is limited and highly dependent on income levels, with the middle and lower income groups suffering the most.  As a result, many of the desired outcomes of a policy-by-price approach (such as increased purchases of hybrids and other fuel efficient vehicles) are never realized because the neediest people cannot afford them, creating a paradox that defies traditional supply and demand elasticity curves.

Middle & Lower Income Groups Most Affected Source: New America

Putting mind-numbing economics lingo aside, the real story here is that as  temperatures have fallen across much of the nation gas prices have not, at least not to the levels we’ve come to expect with autumn setting in.  In fact, as reported by AAA and later picked up by the LA Times, gas prices are at historic highs for this time of year and 22.6% higher than the previous record.

In fact gas prices are rising much faster than incomes, so its hard not to feel a little queasy these days when glancing at the gas gauge and seeing it drop below a quarter tank.  This likely explains why earlier this year AAA reported an upsurge in the number of stranded drivers due to vehicles that had run out of gas.  Apparently many people were stretching out the intervals between refueling in the delusional hope gas prices would decline, a somewhat disturbing change in behavior that reflects the impact high gas prices have on people.

I’ll relate another rather disturbing episode I encountered this past spring on a trip from New York to DC.  It was late at night, well after midnight, and I had stopped at a rest stop in Maryland to grab some coffee to keep me awake for the remainder of my journey (thank goodness Starbucks was open).  As I left my vehicle I heard a woman’s voice call out to me, something about gas and getting home.  I warily looked over and saw a woman of middle age waving me over from the front seat of what looked to be a 20-year-old Jeep Cherokee.

As I approached her she started waiving her wallet out the window.  Did she want to show me her ID?  Then I realized she was showing me her wallet was empty, and she explained that she needed money to buy enough gas to take her the 32 miles to her home.  I handed the woman a few dollars, and then after thinking about it handed her a few more (unfortunately our Cost2drive iPhone app hadn’t launched yet or I could have given her the exact amount).

Something about the whole scene was upsetting. The woman didn’t look indigent, she could have been my mother and I doubt that she’s accustomed to begging for money.  It made me recall some of the scenes from Atlas Shrugged, and as I got back in my car to head back to DC I started to feel a little nauseous.

Students Use Cost2Drive for Trips Back to School

Hundreds of Colleges and Universities Entered as Destinations

Returning College Student (photo credit http://www.stcloudmn.com)

When we launched Cost2Drive we thought that college students might find it a helpful tool for budgeting trips to-and-from college campuses, as well as a way to save money on road trips like those legendary jaunts to spring break destinations.

Boy were we right!  As fall draws near and gas prices remain stubbornly high we took a look to see if users were searching for colleges on Cost2Drive.  We were amazed to learn that students are entering hundreds of institutions of higher learning as destinations on Cost2Drive to help them better plan  their trips back to college.

So what types of schools are students searching for?  It turns out a very broad spectrum of colleges and universities including some of the best known Ivy Leagues schools such as Yale and Harvard (its good to know they need help with math too) as well as lesser known community colleges like Sinclair Community College in Dayton, OH and Nassau Community College out on Long Island, NY.

Below is an interactive maps representing some of the institutions that people have been searching for on Cost2Drive.  Do you see your college on the map?

We’re also including a list of the top 20 colleges and universities based on the number of user searches on Cost2Drive in July along with the current cost to drive to them from nearby metropolitan markets.  If your school is on the list you can click on the link and it will take you to a results page where you can customize the route to learn what it will cost you to drive back to your college.  When you land on the page simply click on the ‘edit trip’ link and add in your home location and vehicle information.

If your school is not on the list you can visit  Cost2Drive.com and find your school using the new autocomplete feature we recently implemented.  Cost2Drive will not only provide the estimated cost of the trip based on current gas prices, but it will also locate the cheapest gas at refueling points along your route.  For trips over 200 miles Cost2Drive will also show you the cheapest airfare so you can see if its cheaper to fly or drive back to school.

If you’d like to have this functionality added to your school website we have a trip planning widget available for free and we’d be happy to help schools add it to their websites to help current and future students plan trips to the university.

To all returning college students: Happy Driving and have a great school year!

Cost to Drive to Top 20 Universities from Major Cities (costs are one-way driving a 2008 Ford Explorer)

1. Cost to drive to Duke University from Washington, DC: $49
2. Cost to drive to California State University – Long Beach from San Francisco, CA: $88
3. Cost to drive to Cornell University from New York, NY: $39
4. Cost to drive to Indiana University from Chicago, IL: $46
5. Cost to drive to Bowling Green State University from Chicago, IL: $50
6. Cost to drive to Marquette University from Minneapolis, MN: $63
7. Cost to drive to Saginaw Valley State University from Chicago, IL: $61
8. Cost to drive to Stanford University from Denver, CO: $248
9. Cost to drive to Southern Methodist University from Phoenix, AZ: $199
10. Cost to drive to The Ohio State University from Chicago, IL: $62
11. Cost to drive to Harvard University from New York, NY: $39
12. Cost to drive to Yale University from Boston, MA: $26
13. Cost to drive to Texas Tech from Denver, CO: $109
14. Cost to drive to University of Maryland from New York, NY: $40
15. Cost to drive to University of North Carolina from Atlanta, GA: $80
16. Cost to drive to University of Southern California from Phoenix, AZ: $64
17. Cost to drive to University of Tennessee from Atlanta, GA: $40
18. Cost to drive to Western Michigan University from Chicago, IL: $44
19. Cost to drive to Virginia Commonwealth University from Philadelphia, PA: $45
20. Cost to drive to University of Wisconsin from Chicago, IL: $29

6ABC Philadelphia TV Segment featuring Cost2Drive.com

Wanna Widget?

New Trip Planning Tool Available Free to Travel Websites

Visit Tampa Bay Widget

Almost from the day we launched the site Cost2Drive.com people have been asking us for a widget version they could easily add to their own blogs or Websites.  In fact a number of tourism sites like Visit San Antonio, Visit Philly and California’s Redwood Coast didn’t bother waiting and already link off to Cost2Drive to help prospective visitors plan better car trips to their destination (and for this we are VERY appreciative!).

Today we’re pleased to announce that we’ve built an iframe version of Cost2Drive that Website owners can easily add  to their site by adding a single line of code.    This is perfect for travel sites that cater to the drive-in market and want to provide additional trip planning tools to their users.  With the average price of gas in the US still well above $3.50 a gallon transportation costs can easily eat up 20% or more of an entire vacation budget, so helping travelers better plan and manage these costs will give them another reason to visit your site, and more importantly your destination!

widget Results Page

To use the widget users simply enter the origin and destination of the trip (note, sites can insert a default destination as in the above example for Tampa, FL) and then their vehicle information.  After entering this information the user clicks on the Find My Cost to Drive button and our Galculator takes care of the rest, returning the trip costs based on real time gas prices along the route.

We couldn’t fit all the great features of Cost2Drive in this small widget so if the user want to see more details, such as a map of the route or where to find the cheapest gas at refueling points, they can click on the See Details button which will take them over to Cost2Drive.com for the full results.  For routes over 200 miles in distance they’ll also see the cheapest airfare so they can easily determine if its cheaper to fly or drive to the destination.

If you’d like to test out the widget functionality check out the live version on VisitTampaBay.com.  Many thanks go out to Jeremy Fairley @VisitTampaBay for working with us to help define the specifications for these widgets in preparation for launching them on the Tampa Bay & Co. Website.

We’ll be posting a self-serve page shortly where you can go to grab the code for the widget and add it to your site.  If you can’t wait and are interested in getting one sooner drop me a line at jim@costtogo.com and we’ll get you hooked up!

Happy Driving!

Are High Gas Prices Impacting Spring Travel?

We Take a Look at Data from Cost2Drive for Clues

With gas prices skyrocketing over the past few months its all but certain that they’re weighing heavily on travelers’ minds, and so we decided to take a look at some data from Cost2Drive.com to see if we could discern any clues to how high gas prices are impacting spring travel.

If we look at the overall visitors to Cost2Drive from March 1 through April 15 we see that the number of visitors has more than doubled from the previous year.  No doubt this is due to a combination of high gas prices and a still-struggling economy that is compelling travelers to seek out these  types of trip planning tools.

The good news is it doesn’t appear that people have lost interest in traveling for spring break as 19.2% of the 62,000 searches on Cost2Drive during this period were for spring break destinations compared with 18.6% in the previous year.

When we take a look at destinations travelers are searching for in advance of spring break its not surprising that locations in Florida dominate the list.  In fact 37% of all searches  on Cost2Drive during this period had somewhere in Florida as the destination, with Chicago to Orlando being the most popular route.  The average trip length entered was 866 miles (one way) which indicates Cost2Drive is attracting a disproportionate share of long-distance car travelers.

Looking at the specific destinations we see that Orlando, Fl was the clear leader when measured against all spring break destinations, capturing 40% of those searches.  There were over 4,500 searches for Orlando (including over 300 searches for Disney World) which represented nearly 8% of all searches on Cost2Drive during this period.  This means that one out of every 12 1/2 searches had Orlando or Kissimmee as the destination.

Share of Spring Break Destination searches on Cost2Drive.com Mar 1-Apr 15

Las Vegas was the second most popular spring break destination searched on Cost2Drive with 12% of searches, followed by Miami/Fort Lauderdale with 11%.  The Florida panhandle, which includes Panama City, Pensacola and Destin, came in fourth with 9% share of all spring break destination searches.

When comparing the percentage of searches year-over-year we see some interesting patterns emerge.

For example, the largest increase in share was for Hilton Head, SC, the second  northernmost destination on the list behind Myrtle Beach.  Their share of searches for spring break destinations increased from .7% to 1.4% (+77%).  Meanwhile the largest decrease in share was for Key West, Fl, the southernmost destination on the list, who’s share decreased from 3.2% to 2.1% (-33%).  From this data one might infer that high gas prices are leading people to seek spring break destinations that are closer to home, which sounds like a logical assumption.  This would also be supported by the increase of search share for Myrtle Beach (+15%) and the Florida Panhandle (+26%).

However anomalies still exist, as Naples and Fort Myers’ search share grew 19% while the share for their neighbors to the north in the Tampa and St. Petersburg area declined 16%.  Also the decrease in share for two West Coast destinations,  Disneyland (-27%) and Las Vegas (-17%), might be attributed to the fact that many of the key feeder markets for these destinations are in California, which has the highest gas prices in the continental US.

Its always risky to draw conclusions on single data points, and cause and effect can be tricky to measure, but there do seem to be some trends emerging around shorter trips due to high gas prices.  The good news is, it doesn’t appear that people have stopped traveling…at least not yet.

One thing is for sure however, people are becoming increasingly interested in trip planning tools like Cost2Drive to help them better plan their car trips.

What are you observations?  Feel free to share them below.

Happy Driving!

Traffic to Cost2Drive Surpasses AAA’s Fuel Cost Calculator!

When you envision a product you often have an existing product in mind where you see opportunity to improve or enhance it in a way that will better serve the marketplace.  Validation can come in many forms, such as user feedback, press attention or, if your product is a Website, traffic.  When we first launched Cost2Drive.com back on October, 2008 AAA’s Fuel Cost Calculator was the product we had our sights on.  So far we’ve received a great deal of validation from our users and the press that we built a superior product.

Today  we’re very excited to report that we’ve achieved our third point of validation as for the first time since launching Cost2Drive traffic to the site has surpassed AAA’s Fuel Cost Calculator.  As gas prices have soared in the past few months Cost2Drive is taking a disproportionate share of the market with Unique Visitors up 184% in December over November and up a stunning 271% from December 2009!  Meanwhile according to Compete.com, a site that reports Website visitation numbers,  traffic to AAA’s Fuel Cost Calculator plummeted as Unique Visitors were down 58% compared to November and down 55% from the prior year.

Based on internal traffic data it appears this trend is continuing in January as recession-battered consumers try to better plan and budget for rising gas prices, and according to a recent US Energy Information Administration report there doesn’t appear to be much relief in sight as gas prices could surpass $4 by this summer.    That’s why we continue to innovate by providing new tools like the Facebook application we launched last month that calculates how much money you’d save driving an electric car to work.

We still believe there is tremendous opportunity for further innovation in this space so look for more exciting news from us in coming months!

Why are gas prices so high?