I’m a huge fan of Mint.com so when I heard AwardWallet.com mentioned in the same sentence, I decided to take a look. The concept is straight forward. Enter your login credentials and AwardWallet.com will track your balances and notify you of events such as expiration of points/miles.
The Good:
- The interface is clean
- The website had no issues gathering my balance information; I tested 2 hotels, 2 airlines, 2 car rentals, and my corporate card
- I really like having all my membership numbers in a single location
The Not-So-Good:
- I got a email telling me about my travel itinerary as soon as I entered my airline information; I did not ask to track my travel plans.
- Instead of displaying my Hertz balance, it had a link asking me to upgrade to AwardWallet Plus; I haven’t had a chance to see the value in the service and I’m already being asked for money?
- A connection section; No I’m not interested in sharing my travel plans with all my connections
Suggestion to AwardWallet.com: You need to focus on being awesome in a single space. Stop trying to compete with TripIt. Build a great service, then ask for money. Asking me to upgrade before I can truely understand the value is wasting both our times. Not everything needs to have a social networking component to it (Mint.com did not and look how well they did). Some of us think Facebook is a waste of time (and frequent flyers don’t have alot of time). Understand your target customer and get some of them on your board. Your website is called "Award Wallet", not "Travel Itineraries" or "Travel Connections" - either change your name or stop trying to be all things. FOCUS FOCUS FOCUS
I plan to report back after I’ve given it a few cycles. Let’s see what happens.