Welcome To MissTravel.Com: The Airbnb For “Professional” Women And The Men That Love Them
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Couchsurfing is the site for people who want to stay on other people’s couches; Airbnb is the site for people who want to stay in other people’s empty apartments; and MissTravel.com is the site for women who want to stay in beds of completely strange rich men who will pay them to fly from wherever they are in the world to do so. Welcome to the hardly believable, questionably legal travel “dating” site that is Miss Travel. (Editor’s Note: Just to be clear, Miss Travel was brought to my attention via a Facebook mention, and I had no part in discovering this site myself via late-night Google searches or word-of-mouth recommendations.)
Miss Travel bills itself as “the only online dating website for travelers,” which “match[es] Generous travelers who hate to travel alone with Attractive travelers who would love the opportunity to travel the world for free.” Here, “Attractive” members (well, attractive women at least), who want to travel somewhere specific but lack the funds to do so can simply sign up and upload a picture of themselves, and hope that one of the “Generous” men of the site will shell out the cash to fly out said lucky lady to come spend some time with them. Note the use of the words “Attractive” and “Generous”; these are proper nouns used by the site itself — they sound so much better than Madam and John, right?
Lest you think the women are getting short-changed in this deal, Miss Travel also assures its potential Attractive travelers that they get much more than simply free trips and a weekend with a dreamy man.
Besides matchmaking, MissTravel.com does a whole lot more. The website provides an incentive system that allows Generous members the ability to gift frequent flyer points to Attractive members (hence gifting them the gift of travel). Attractive members who accumulates enough frequent flyer points may redeem them for free airline tickets and hotel rooms, allowing them the opportunity to travel the world for free.
Even better for the Julia Roberts of the world, those gratis frequent flyer miles are no longer considered taxable income by the IRS! So don’t worry about that awkward situation of sitting down with your accountant and having to explain what services you were providing in connection with earning those miles.
And who is the Ivy League grad that is the brains behind this altruistic site? Well, it’s no other than MIT grad Brandon Wade, who lists SeekingArrangement.com, SeekingMillionaire.com and WhatsYourPrice.com as other components of his charitable empire. Per the site, “[p]rior to these endeavors, he served as a management consultant with Booz Allen, and held executive roles at several Fortune 500 companies, including General Electric and Microsoft.” Shockingly, after stints in Boston and San Francisco, Mr. Wade now calls Las Vegas home.
I will now be taking bets for which of the three things will happen within the next six months:
1) Charlie Sheen is taken on as the face of Miss Travel à la William Shatner and Priceline;
2) Mr. Wade’s alma mater MIT, at the behest of grads Ben Bernacke (Class of ’79) and Kofi Annan (Class of ’72), comes forward with the “shocking” news that Mr. Wade is neither a graduate of the school, nor has ever submitted an application to it; or
3) MissTravel is raided and shut down by the Feds as a result of its thinly veiled attempt to bill itself as anything but an online escort service.
My bet is on #3.