Boston-based Goby gets a nice mention in this USA Today article around search engines that help you find and book themed travel plans. Other companies mentioned (each with a short pros/cons analysis) include Wanderfly, Tripbase, and CheapFlights.

USA Today is describing Goby and the other three tas “travel-inspiration sites,” vs sites that focus more heavily on the booking aspect like Expedia. All seem to have many similar base characteristics, but each seem to be finding their own niche as well for savvy consumers knowing how/in what situations to use one over another. From the article:

“Major online travel agencies such as Travelocity and Expedia also offer vacation searching by theme, but they try to get you to the booking quickly. In contrast, most travel-inspiration websites are for people who have no clue where to go and are just beginning their research.”

Goby recently passed the 500,000 downloads mark for their mobile app, and shared some really interesting usage data with us the other week. Some of the most interesting, I thought, were differences between what iPhone and Android users search for on Goby.