One of the oldest online tools that frequent flyers relied on has finally shut down. I guess this shouldn’t be surprising, but I also can’t make sense of why it had to be this way…
In this post:
After nearly 25 years, SeatGuru shuts down
SeatGuru was launched all the way back in 2001, and I think just about any frequent flyer is familiar with the tool (well, maybe some young people are less familiar with it, but at least a decade ago, everyone used it). SeatGuru would show you the seat maps of most aircraft types, with notes about which seats are good and bad.
Given what a widely used resource this was, TripAdvisor ended up acquiring SeatGuru in 2007. You can see how owning SeatGuru could be an asset for TripAdvisor, in terms of getting people onto the site. However, it seems that it became less and less of a focus over time, and in early 2020, SeatGuru published new seat maps for the last time.
So for over five years, the SeatGuru website was up, but with no updates to seat maps. Well, that has now changed, as noted by DansDeals. When you go to seatguru.com, you’ll now see a message that “SeatGuru has closed down,” encouraging people to go to TripAdvisor instead (which… doesn’t offer the same advice).
I get that maybe this wasn’t the biggest priority for TripAdvisor (and Expedia, by extension), but I really don’t understand why they didn’t just keep it running. It doesn’t take that much work to update seat maps, when you consider the potential amount of traffic it can generate.
You’d think that having the most widely used airplane seat map resource would be a useful tie-in for any online travel agency. Admittedly direct revenue opportunities are otherwise pretty limited, aside from impression based ads, and some referrals to other businesses in parallel spaces.
aeroLOPA is the best airplane seat map tool nowadays
While I’m symbolically sad to see SeatGuru discontinued, I can’t say that I’ve used the site in the past several years. As I’ve covered in the past, nowadays aeroLOPA is the best website for airplane seat maps.
No, aeroLOPA doesn’t color code seats as “good” or “bad,” but I consider it to be much more useful than that, since you can actually draw your own conclusions based on the seat maps. aeroLOPA shows the exact locations of windows, and publishes seat information and details to a much higher level of specificity than SeatGuru ever did.
Bottom line
SeatGuru has finally shut down, after not seeing any changes for over five years. It’s the end of an era, but I guess it got to the point where the information was so outdated that it wasn’t even worth keeping up anymore.
It’s odd that TripAdvisor bought SeatGuru, only to essentially give up on it. But sadly that happens all too often when big companies acquire smaller players.
What do you make of SeatGuru being shut down?
I've sent them emails from time to time to update seat maps and aircraft on my usual go-to airlines. And I've done the same with aeroLOPA; I actually corresponded with the latter several months ago.
In my opinion, this is a huge loss that has been greatly downplayed by Ben. seatguru is completely different from aerolopa. The former actually tells you which variant of an aircraft that operates the flight, while you have no clue which one of the 4 A333 LOPAs will be on your booked EI flight for example.
You know what else that should follow Seatguru shutdown.
ATC and Daylight Saving Time.
Well, SeatMaestro with even more outdated data than SeatGuru's is still up and there're actually people uploading new reviews to this date.
Anyways, bye bye SeatGuru.
For me aeroLOPA is an awesome replacement but it really is crazy, as still now seatguru will rank very highly on google (showing outdated seatmaps), so I'm all with Ben, that they are wasting good money they could have easily kept comming for under 100.000 per year.
This is also systematic as TripAdvisor used to be an awesome site to share advice about interesting spots all over the world. Now it has deteriarated to some...
For me aeroLOPA is an awesome replacement but it really is crazy, as still now seatguru will rank very highly on google (showing outdated seatmaps), so I'm all with Ben, that they are wasting good money they could have easily kept comming for under 100.000 per year.
This is also systematic as TripAdvisor used to be an awesome site to share advice about interesting spots all over the world. Now it has deteriarated to some site that only tries to sell payed tours to you, I stopped using it years ago.
I think you're a little too positive about aerolopa as a replacement. Sure, you're a very frequent flyer, so you can look at their detailed maps and pick what you want. But lots of people don't automatically realize, for example, that the seats in front of an exit row won't recline. Or that bulkhead seats will have trays in the armrests. Aerolopa won't be as useful for people like that.
I’ve been using seatmaps.com, mainly because there is color coding on their maps, and also links to reviews of many of the plane types (including many from OMAAT). AeroLOPA looks slicker but really doesn’t provide much else than the visual.
@TravelinPenis - adding value every day to OMAAT. Not!
It is shocking they shut it down. I can’t imagine the logic of this from a natural traffic standpoint.
Aerolopa is good but it’s not entirely complete.
What we really need are 360 degree matterport powered views of all seats especially bulkheads so I can figure out is there a cutout. Is it big enough for a normal underseat bag, or only a briefcase.
I also want to know which overhead bins are filled with safety equipment (looking at the first 3 rows of the UA transcontinental 757s) so I don’t book those seats...
Aerolopa is good but it’s not entirely complete.
What we really need are 360 degree matterport powered views of all seats especially bulkheads so I can figure out is there a cutout. Is it big enough for a normal underseat bag, or only a briefcase.
I also want to know which overhead bins are filled with safety equipment (looking at the first 3 rows of the UA transcontinental 757s) so I don’t book those seats if I have overhead luggage.
I also want to know does a seat actually have underseat storage or is it blocked by a bar, equipment, or other things.
Why do you care? You’re a $10 trillion equity partner at every top 100 law firm on earth and you always fly private. Just kidding. How how’s your mom’s basement?
Great…why dont you start your own site?