Wanderfly.com travel-planning site launches in beta

by Meg Nesterov on


A new travel-planning website and booking engine is launching this month in beta, and I was excited to give it a test run, having first heard about the site this spring at a EuroCheapo travel happy hour. Wanderfly.com is a “personalized recommendation engine” that takes your interests, budget, and even social network connections to give you inspiration and help you plan your next vacation. Flights and hotels are pulled from Expedia, with restaurant recommendations, activities, and sightseeing descriptions culled from Lonely Planet, FourSquare, NileGuide, and Yelp.

Let’s say you have a week to travel in early September for Labor Day. Budget is under $1,000 per person for flights and hotels, and you’re interested in culture, beaches, and food. Plug all those into the search engine and you’ll get a series of destinations to review, refine, share, and book. While the site still has a few bugs (budget busters would sneak through the filters, the help feature is not fully enabled), the interface is slick and user-friendly, the features are thoughtful, and the content is reliable.

What’s cool about the site:

  • Since I’m currently based in Turkey, I loved that your point of origin could be pretty much anywhere in the world so I could run searches from New York and Istanbul to get a wide variety of places convenient for different parts of the world.
  • A wide (1,200 and growing) network of destinations gave me some ideas I’d never considered or even heard of (Kalingrad, Russia; Azemmour, Morocco; Krabi, Thailand), as well as some more tried-and-true vacation spots(Sunny Isles Beach, Florida; Mykonos, Greece; Split, Croatia).
  • Weather and news tabs give you an idea of the current climate (could be too hot on that Egyptian beach) and happenings, though you might come up with nothing for more obscure destinations. I also love that many of the news feeds are through Twitter accounts like @visitbritain, giving up-to-the-minute quickie items.

What will be cool about the site:

  • Ability to share trip ideas and plans with friends via email or Facebook is great for planning a trip with multiple people or getting feedback on a destination. Currently, Facebook Connect will tell you who you know in a given place, but I’d probably remember if I had a friend in Lutsk, Ukraine.
  • Festivals and special events come up via Eventful, but on the beta site event dates will pop up well after your search range so don’t plan around that blues festival just yet. There are also plans to add destination reviews, currency converters, and travel tips.
  • After all the searching, sorting, and sharing, you can actually book through the site, though only if you have a US credit card. The booking interface is also easy to use and gives options for frequent flier numbers, seat and meal preferences, and room types.

All in all, Wanderfly is a nifty new tool for dreaming and planning your next trip. If they could find a way to integrate time-sensitive deals, local blogs, and multiple-destination trips, this could be the only travel site you need.

Lonely Planet interactive travel books arrive in the iBooks store

by Scott Carmichael on

As the e-book market starts becoming more mainstream, some electronic titles are beginning to outsell their paper versions. Because of these rapid developments, traditional paper publishers are quickly developing e-versions of their popular publications.

Lonely Planet, one of the biggest names in travel publishing just released their first five e-books to the Apple iBooks store. Their Discover guides are available for Great Britain, Italy, Spain, France and Ireland. Unlike some static e-books, the Lonely Planet Discover guides have been completely recreated with a variety of interactive features. The guides offer over 3000 hyperlinks, detailed maps, bookmark, note and highlight options as well as hundreds of images.

Of course, you’ll need an iPad to enjoy the guide, and walking down the streets of Paris while staring at your iPad may not be the best idea, but it should make pre-planning and planning from your hotel room much easier. Best of all, because the content is stored locally, you won’t burn through expensive international cellular data or WiFi to access information.

I’ve taken their guide for a spin, and feel that it is pretty safe to say that this is the future of the travel guide. The Discover Guides can be found in the Apple iBooks store accessible on your device.

Lonely Planet 1000 Ultimate Experiences for the iPad – free for three days only!

by Scott Carmichael on

Lonely Planet has been in a really generous mood this year – back in April, they gave away all their European iPhone city guides to help stranded volcanic ash passengers, and now they are giving away their most popular iPad app.

1000 Ultimate Experiences is exactly what the name describes – a guide with 1000 of the best experiences in the world, in an app that takes full advantage of the iPad. With 100’s of photos, full screen video clips and more, there is no better way to sit back and find your next ultimate vacation destination.

Everything is neatly split into sections like strangest museums, ultimate sailing trips or classic campervan routes. You’ll find the app in the app store and the folks at Lonely Planet do ask that you leave a review of the app to help spread the word.

Travel Trends: The rise of the ‘Free Independent Traveler’ (FIT)

by Gadling Staff on

Over the last few years, the world travel landscape has undergone significant changes brought by security concerns, the economic crisis and green considerations. These new conditions have given rise to a new type of tourist: the “Free Independent Traveler,” or FIT. The term refers generally to people over 35, of above average income, and who like to travel in small groups or as couples. They avoid mass tourism and the holiday package of traditional travel operators, and favor a more individualistic approach to travel. They may or may not be “Four Percenters.”

Free Independent Travelers as an alternative movement?
FITs tend to be environmentally aware, with the desire to experience new ways of life and usually are enthusiastic, off-the-beaten-track explorers with a thirst for experiencing the “real thing.” They enjoy good food, architecture, and the heritage of local cultures.

Also, they are an important and growing sector in the travel market. Governments, regional tourist boards and other public sectors responsible for tourism development try to attract them. Why? The basic principle is economics. FITs spread their money around in a more efficient fashion, buying from multiple locations driven by their own particular itinerary and tastes and by the intention of enjoying the local way of life. In contrast, tour groups concentrate in a few providers, which tend to spread money in a less than optimal manner.


The Power of Information
How FITs garner information for their trips is of vital importance. Not surprisingly, a wide variety of sources and/or tips from social websites are key.Sites such as Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree forum or GoNOMAD.com are both examples and represent the fundamental difference between the FIT and other types of traveler. Many FITs are even leraging Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and other social networking sites to get information about trips. After all, independent travel is about the sharing and passing on of ideas and knowledge. The FIT vacation is a custom-built menu fed by suggestions from friends, forums, specialty providers or others. The rise of low-cost airlines in the US and Europe has also increased the supply of alternative and lower cost short haul destinations fueling demand for these newly available markets.

The internet is fundamental to the rise of the FIT, and as such, many traditional Travel Operators interested in tapping into this new, growing market are starting to offer fully customized travel options through their websites to create almost an oxymoron: Independent Travel Operators.

Take a look at the trends in information gathering and travel booking below. (Please note that all data points for 2010 and 2011 have been forecasted to show future trends. We can’t see into the future.)

Information Sourcing for Travel
As you can clearly see below, FITs have turned almost exclusively to the Internet for information gathering and trip-planning.

Where do people go to price airline tickets?
As you can see from this chart, FITs have largely abandoned advice from tour guides, tour books, friends, and relatives to price airline tickets. [Ed’s note — who ever asked their friends for details about airline ticket prices?!] With the rise of the Internet, FITs are instead going directly to the source to learn about and compare airline ticket prices. For anyone who has ever visited a booking aggregator or an airline website, of course, this makes perfect sense.

Where do people go to book tours?
As with the chart above, FITs have almost entirely abandoned tour operators for actually booking their trips and/or extended tours.

So are you a FIT traveler?

Data Sources:

See more Travel Trends.

Lonely Planet volcano relief – free European iPhone city guides!

by Scott Carmichael on

Stranded in Europe due to volcanic ash? How about getting to know your host city a little better with the help of a Lonely Planet city guide? The guides normally cost $9.99, but Lonely Planet has graciously turned them into free apps until Thursday.

The lineup of apps covers most major European cities, and a list of the cities included (with App store links) can be found on the Lonely Planet blog.

Of course, nothing is stopping you from downloading the apps if you are not stranded, but be nice to Lonely Planet and snag one of their paid apps as well – they are good people, and the quality of these free guides is quite impressive.

This isn’t even the only bit of goodwill from Lonely Planet – they have also opened up a discussion forum where stranded travelers can find some assistance. To find a bed, car for share or anything else – head on over to the Volcano Refugee Network.

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