Today GeckoGo (http://www.geckogo.com) officially launches to the public. GeckoGo is the go-to source for independent travelers to plan their trip, research destinations, get travel inspiration and give back to the travel community.

GeckoGo is not another travel website with maps and a flight cost estimator. It is a portal to fill in the all the gaps in between those two, with a free, fast and insightful peer to peer distribution of knowledge. With 9% of users adding information, compared to 1% that's typical for similar sites, GeckoGo is not just another login; it’s the fastest growing source of unique user generated travel content on the web.

The idea is simple. Rather than being a travel resource that pretends to know the best empanada stands in Ecuador and hiking routes in Nepal, GeckoGo built a platform for people to share that information with each other. Quickly, easily and free.

Quietly available since July 2008, GeckoGo has become the fastest growing source of unique user-generated travel related content on the web. Already GeckoGo boasts over 54,000 unique travel tips.

Eighty-percent of independent travelers use the internet to do their travel research, 1 but 77% of users say they can find the travel information they need on the internet only if they search multiple sites.2 GeckoGo plans to simplify this search process by being available where the users are (whether on the web or on social utility sites such as Facebook or MySpace,) by making suggestions and recommendations on destinations to visit by learning travelers’ interests, and by encouraging travelers to interact with and help one another.

In celebration of their official launch, GeckoGo has teamed up with Intrepid Travel to offer the “Search for the Ultimate Intrepid Traveler Contest” (http://www.geckogo.com/contest/).

For the month of October, anyone can enter to win a mystery trip worth at least $6000USD to be part of Intrepid’s R&D team scouting out new and adventurous destinations. To enter, the participant simply creates an account and fills out all the cities he or she has visited and provides worthy travel tips to other users. The finalists will be chosen by a notable panel of judges including Jamling Norgay, the son of the first Sherpa to summit Mount Everest and Chris Doyle the Vice President of the Adventure Travel Trade Association.

About GeckoGo
GeckoGo was founded in 2007 by Aaron Chow, Eric MacKinnon, Indra Heckenbach and Pokin Yeung. It is a travel planning and inspiration source for independent travelers, and host to the fastest growing source of unique travel content on the Internet. GeckoGo is based in Mountain View, California and Vancouver, British Columbia.