In the process, they’re disrupting the established travel industry, including trip planners, travel agencies and rental services of all kinds. Even first-generation social travel sites like TripAdvisor with its millions of user-generated travel reviews face increased competition from travel social networks that have popped up in more recent years.

What Is Social Travel?

Social travel simply refers to information-sharing about travel. Typically, the new services include a website and mobile app and let you tap into your existing social networks on Twitter and Facebook for travel advice, as well as communicate with other travelers you’ve never met via the sites’ own social travel network. Some are focused on bookings and rentals, but more are about discovery and sharing tools and aim to be your personal travelogue. New social travel players like San Francisco-based Suiteness continue to pop up month after month. Since it can be hard to know which sites are worthy of attention because there are so many, we’ve compiled the list below of six noteworthy innovators in social travel.