Women-focused online travel community, ThelmaandLouise.com, is relaunching with a fully fledged social network and high ambitions for growth.
The new site is the result of a dramatic overhaul of its predecessor of four years and will feature a string of new features as it looks to capitalise on the growth in women travelling alone or in groups.
The idea behind the site is to connect like-minded female travellers before, during and after a trip, allowing them to swap ideas, routes and advice about destinations.
The old site was a pretty static and content-heavy offering with only a few, basic community functions. The latest version sees sharing tools, interactive guides as well as hotel search facilities (courtesy of a deal with HotelsCombined).
Officials admit the previous site had fallen far behind other online communities, especially since the meteoric rise of Facebook.
But a direct connection into the omnipresent social network (using Facebook Connect) is not currently on the agenda as the company believes users wish to keep their use of Facebook separate, says Stephen Barling of T&L.
The launch of the new site this week also coincides with a strong growth plan for the company.
Barling says a combination of word-of-mouth amongst existing users, web marketing and PR will hopefully push the site's existing memberships base of 8,000 (captured over the course of the past four years) to a heady 50,000 within 12 months.