More travel news this week with the launch of Stay 2.0, the beta version of this destination guide. One of the biggest points of differentiation is the inclusion of several social and personalized features. The move by Stay comes at a time when the online travel industry as a whole looks to leverage social and mobile components.

Stay.com is aggressively seeking growth, emerging onto a crowded scene. Expedia is also going after the social sector, as is Kayak and a number of other tech startups like NileGuide and TripIt. Then there’s the big search engines like Google and Microsoft, which are layering more social features onto their maps and reference guides.

Stay.com, which has been backed by Braganza AS, owner of Norwegian airline Braathens, will be looking to its personalization features for distinction. The site does so by leveraging its many partnerships, from TripAdvisor to OpenTable. This could lead to more social feature integration, as custom tools have a tendency to meet the needs of private and multiple access points. Stay.com CEO Joachim Paasche says,

“Stay.com is an ad-free experience that allows users to create their own personal travel guides. In order to deliver an ad-free service we built our own hotel booking engine which fits perfectly within the concept. Instead of getting ads from other websites we delivered a recommendation engine for hotels to offer great deals based on what users add to their guides. In this, and many other ways, Stay.com is very intuitive.”

Social media meets these needs, despite sounding paradoxical. Social networks like Facebook are becoming more private for individual purposes (accessing saved profile data to repurpose in your phone Contacts, iTunes preferences, etc.). When sharing revolves around this repurposing of data, a brand is better able to leverage its built-in marketing.

The privacy aspects of creating custom travel tools around social media access points and sharing behavior is another concern. Stay and all the others will have to navigate the current privacy landscape in a place where consumer and social data converge.

The good thing is social media has already had a positive impact on the online travel industry. Current platforms from the likes of Facebook and Twitter have made it easier for travel sites to offer individualized features to consumers, and it’s beginning to really pay off.

Disclosure: I have worked as a consultant with Stay.com.