Happy Sites App is ‘Gamechanger’ for Travel Advisors Taking Hotel Inspection Notes

It was the diligent work of a travel advisor during a site inspection that helped inspire Happy Sites, a new mobile app made for advisors and event planners to organize their hotel notes. 

Travis Pham, a meeting and event specialist, was touring a North Fork, Long Island hotel with a travel advisor friend when he first had the idea. 

“I just looked over, and she was taking photos on her phone. She also had a little notebook, and she was writing as we were walking from room to meeting space to restaurants,” Pham told Travel Market Report. “I was like, ‘there’s got to be a better way to do this.'” 

Two years later, Happy Sites is available to download and use to document and share notes, photos, and reviews of any hotel in the world. Pham and co-founder Javier Valdez, a hospitality sales professional, designed it especially for travel advisors and event planners, who Pham said have similar objectives: to capture all those fine details and pitch the site to a client. 

Happy Sites helps its users do just that with special built-in features prompting users to input certain information. It’s gained 400 users since launching in August, and the co-founders are welcoming feedback as they continue its development. 

That’s because the project is growing into something more – beyond just capturing the notes, advisors can add friends on the app to see other advisors’ hotel ratings. Ultimately, Pham said the goal is to make Happy Sites “a LinkedIn meets TripAdvisor but specifically for the travel industry.” 

How the App Works 

Happy Sites is free to download and use – there are no paid features. In the future, Pham sees opportunities for hotels and destination marketing organizations to promote themselves on the app and “foot the bill,” so to speak.

When you open the app, you can search for the hotel you want to take notes on. All hotels around the world are pre-loaded in the system, so you can see basic information about each one. You can then add your own notes and photos in seven categories: Hotel Overview, Guest Rooms, Hotel Amenities, Meetings & Events, Catering, Destination, and Miscellaneous.  

Within each category, there are specific rating sections and toggle options for travel advisors to make note of the fine details, from number of restaurants to shuttle service and parking to year it was last renovated and much more. 

“I think that’s helpful for new travel agents, as well, who may not know what notes to make or questions to ask on a site inspection,” Pham said. “This is guiding them through that process.” 

You can even take the photos right in the app, as opposed to taking them in the Camera app and then uploading them. Though all this happens on your phone, it’s easy to export it all and get it onto your computer or other device. Simply click “Export Site Notes” and you can send it in an email or save the file on a cloud drive of your choice. 

Then there’s the social component. Currently, you’ll need to share an invite code to add friends and see each other’s hotel reviews. In the future, though, the Happy Sites team wants to add capability to connect to LinkedIn to add friends on the app. They also plan to add more trade-friendly integrations and are in talks with Virtuoso and Signature about potential collaborations. 

“We want to make it the LinkedIn for travel advisors. You go on a TripAdvisor and see consumer reviews, but you want to see it from a travel agency perspective and know, is this hotel travel advisor friendly?” Pham said. “We also want to be able to have the hotel integrate their proposals into the app so you can easily look and see what the hotel rates are for travel agents versus just consumer rates which is currently what’s offered there.” 

Firsthand Experiences with Happy Sites 

Patricia Serrano, travel designer and owner of Fresh Traveler, said that Happy Sites has “truly changed the way I work.” 

“Having a central location where I can log my site visits, add notes, and easily reference details later has been a game changer,” she said. “Instead of flipping through scattered notebooks or relying solely on memory, I now have everything in one place.” 

On an ALG Vacations FAM trip to Maui earlier this month, I entered that same scatter-brained mindset, visiting nine different hotels in three days. I didn’t have Happy Sites handy during the trip, but I wish I did. Instead, I loaded all the information afterwards to get a feel for the app.  

I see how helpful the Happy Sites app would have been to distinguish each hotel from one another while I was still on site. All the information is right there on the app, and it would have helped to have it directly in front of me to ask more informed questions in the moment. 

Still, when I returned home from my trip, the app was useful. I was able to retroactively upload photos and copy/paste notes from my Notes app to Happy Sites. So, if you have past site inspections that you’d like to save on the app to have it all in one place, it’s easy to do that, too. 

I enjoy how simple and intuitive the user experience is. When more integrations and features are added, I hope Happy Sites will remain accessible to those newer to the industry because I see it being a helpful tool for both seasoned and less-experienced advisors alike. 

Serrano puts its best, saying the app has turned what used to be an overwhelming experience – trying to get straight which hotels offer what – into giving her clients “more accurate and polished recommendations.” 

“The app has already saved me hours of post-inspection work and improved the way I present options,” she said. “I also love that the Happy Sites team is receptive to feedback — after a recent conversation with them, I’m excited about the future updates and upgrades that will make the tool even more powerful.”