apps.facebook.com/gekko

It’s time to start planning your next big trip. Where do you start?

TripAdvisor? Bing or Google? Maybe a forum on Frommer’s or Lonely Planet?

How about Facebook? As Michel Cassius, CEO of Gekko, a new Facebook-based hotel-booking app, says, “You can’t ignore 750 million people.”

The app, which went live on Tuesday, adds some new twists to the travel-planning-meets-social-networking pretzel. In addition to receiving recommendations from their Facebook friends, users can query the larger Gekko community, compare prices via 40 booking partners and even request a better deal from specific hotels if they don’t find a price they like.

Similar to other Facebook-oriented travel apps, such as Gtrot and Gogobot, Gekko is based on the premise that people are more likely to take advice and trust reviews from people they know than from uncounted anonymous posts from complete strangers.

To use the app, members can simply type in a question — “Does anybody know of a good hotel in Amsterdam?” for example — and monitor the responses on their wall. They can also create lists of favorite places, share them via the “like” button and query the larger Gekko community if, say, their friends have never been to Amsterdam.

“It’s more of an interest network than a friend network,” said Cassius. “You can find experts and follow them, but you don’t need to be friends with them.”

The app’s most unique feature, however, is its Request a Deal button, which appears on the same page as the results from traditional third-party booking sites. If none of the displayed rates fit your budget or other parameters, you can click on the button to contact the hotel directly.

“The hotel can say, ‘Hey, this guy wants to come stay.’ Why not give him a discount?” said company director Bas Lemmens. “They can do that because it’s a closed environment and they’re not publishing [a lower price] on a public website.”

Of course, the hotel can always say no but, if nothing else, the option leverages the idea that travel planning and social networking can work together to provide a more personal, more powerful online experience.

“We want to give the consumer the choice of what they do with the social graph,” said Lemmens.

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Rob Lovitt is a longtime travel writer who still believes the journey is as important as the destination. Follow him at Twitter.