Find your dream trip through the “inspiration engine”
Planning a trip is increasingly difficult. Combining the right location with the right activities and the right food, all at the right price is a challenge. Many sites across the web do their best to offer tailored recommendations to their customers. Few truly provide the detailed answers that are desired. A newly launched site, still in beta, that attempts to fill that void is Wanderfly.
The site coins itself as an “inspiration engine”. To live up to this worthy label, the service needs to be simple yet very appealing, both visually and emotionally. Therefore, they have ensured that the interface is above all simple and easy to use. As such Wanderfly focuses on three variables: A user’s budget, time frame, and interests. The interests are represented by well-designed and approachable icons that range from food and culture to “eco-friendly” and nightlife. Destination options can be tailed to specific regions or cities or they can be kept wide open for a real surprise. It is almost like spinning a globe and choosing a destination by stopping it with your finger to determine where you are going to visit. The big difference is that you’ll know everything you need to get there and to make the most of your trip once you land.
The way that Wanderfly collects trusted information to make for a truly inspiring travel recommendation is that it searches 22 trusted sites which include Expedia, Foursquare, Yelp, and Lonely Planet. With the information gathered from those sites it recommends a trip complete with destination, flight, hotel, and activities. With the recommendation, users can customize these options and book through Expedia or that can simply flip to the next suggested trip. As a means to add another layer of social to the experience, Wanderfly allows you to directly connect to friends in any of your potential destinations through Facebook.
Wanderfly is based out of New York City and currently features more than 1200 global destinations. However, many more destination are to come. Apparently they are also working on quickly taking their service to the next level by adding concierge packages, restaurant reservations, travel products, and event tickets. To make the experience more social they are also exploring user-generated content, group-planning tools, and a widget to allow outside travel parties to integrate into their site.
You can visit their site to play around with their service. Happy travels!
