Traxo integrates TripIt — Is the travel industry crazy?

Itinerary management service Traxo has just integrated itinerary management service TripIt.

Huh?

Would this be like Expedia integrating Priceline?

Not exactly.

In addition to its itinerary management service, Traxo recently launched the Traxo Travel Score, which enables travelers to win perks based on the extent of their past trips.

So Andres Fabris, Traxo cofounder and CEO, says the company tapped into the TripIt API to access data about Traxo users’ past trips recorded by TripIt to ensure they get proper credit to build their Traxo travel scores.

Fabris says Traxo users requested that Traxo access their TripIt data to boost their scores.

Traxo also integrated Foursquare and Gowalla to help build Traxo users’ travel scores, Fabris says.

He says Traxo plans on accessing TripIt, Foursquare and Gowalla data about Traxo users’ past trips and then periodically will get select refreshes to help ensure that Traxo users’ roster of trips are kept as current as possible.

Fabris notes that it is advantageous for Traxo to tap into data from competitor TripIt, which Traxo referred to as a “leading trip information provider” in an email to customers, because TripIt has a “long tail of providers,” touching travel segments such as cruise, rail and boutique hotels, which Traxo doesn’t cover.

TripIt has a much larger footprint with supppliers than Traxo, Fabris concedes.

Traxo and TripIt have somewhat different ways of gathering users’ trip information to build their itineraries.

TripIt users often email their confirmations to TripIt and Traxo scrapes users’ accounts on supplier sites to gather the data.

Fabris doesn’t express any acute concern about Traxo mining data from its much larger rival, TripIt, which has 3 million customers and is growing.

Fabris paints Traxo as more leisure- and social-oriented than TripIt or, as he puts it, an iPhone to TripIt’s more business-travel-oriented Blackberry.

TripIt, of course, has iPhone and iPad apps, 1 million mobile customers (not all of whom are on Blackberrys) and might disagree with Fabris’s assessment of the two companies’ differentiation.

Another aspect of the TripIt, Gowalla and Foursquare integration is that Traxo users will be getting a much richer accounting of their past itineraries as they now will be filled in with check-ins at restaurants and activities etc.

Calling this aspect of Traxo’s service “unique,” Fabris says the integration means Traxo users’ itineraries will includes flights, hotel stays, car rentals, cruises, and rail excursions, as well as check-ins.

All is possible when a competitor integrates a competitor”s magical API.