Well... at least you're self-aware. Cool travel collaboration things were probably old hat when I was working on one [1] in 2005. :P
I left the travel industry in 2011, but if any of my knowledge still applies, and you want to make some money... you need to do things to drive hotel bookings.
You probably need a catalog of hotels and places to visit anyway to help users plan things. But make sure you have a way for your users to book those hotels and you to get a commission. Make sure you're making landing pages for people to find with search engines. You'll probably want/need to pay to get people into those same landing pages, so you'll need to be tracking revenue at a very granular level, so you can bid higher on the pages that make you more money, and less (or not at all) on the pages that don't. And if you're in multiple commission programs (which you should be), you can be sure to highlight the ones that make you more money.
You may want to have something t help your users make airplane and car bookings too, but those margins are slim, so work on hotels first.