Yonderbound Seeks To Redefine How You Plan Your Travels
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Earlier this year I had the chance to meet the founders of Yonderbound, a travel marketplace created by three women who have more than 30 years of experience in travel and tourism between them, who have set out to create a new way to find deals on travel and to plan a trip. At their core, the team at Yonderbound believes that everyone should have the right to travel, and that experiencing more of the world helps us make it a better place. Who can argue with that philosophy?
Yonderbound has more than 383,693 hotels in 192 countries to choose from, but that’s not all. Yonderbound allows you to create public profiles and put together your own “Yonderboxes,” which are essentially visual saved searches that allow you to add images, links to activities and hotel preferences, and which can then be shared between you and others for planning purposes (say, your significant other or a group of friends). You can also come back to the boxes and edit them as your trip planning progresses.
You can even make your Yonderbox public to the entire Yonderbound community, allowing anyone planning a similar trip to be inspired by your ideas and vice versa. This is a great feature that allows you to pick “experts” or those who have already traveled to where you are looking to go and get insider tips and information about where to stay and why — a great alternative to scrolling through dozens of reviews left by a wide assortment of people.
You can see a few of my Yonderboxes based upon cities that I visited recently (or, in New York’s case, live in) here: (Portland) here: (Scottsdale) and here: (New York).
So to borrow a question from the startup world: What is the problem the team at Yonderbound is trying to fix? When it comes down to it, they are trying to address the seemingly never-ending search that accompanies even the most basic booking.
As the Yonderbound recently told Tnooz, “According to Amadeus and Phocuswright, the average traveler visits four websites before making the final decision to book their trip. Yonderbound alleviates the hassle of having to go to multiple sites by creating a platform where users can find the essentials they need to plan and book their trip without being redirected to another site.”
Beyond the community of users that use the site, Yonderbound has also partnered up with Virtuoso for custom trip planning and expert travel advice from trusted advisers.
Additionally, Yonderbound is putting its money where its mouth is to support its philosophy that everyone should go out and explore the world by recently launching its “Yonderfund,” which allow consumers to win funds to pay for their dream trip through community voting.
Right now, Yonderbound is giving away at least one free trip per month based upon a specific theme or event. The inaugural Yonderfund offered a trip to the San Francisco Pride Celebration, and other Yonderfund contests included trips to the MTV Video Music Awards in Los Angeles and the VANS Triple Crown of Surfing in Hawaii.
To learn more or to start exploring the community’s Yonderboxes, click through here.
[This article was sponsored by Yonderobund]
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Matt Stabile is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TheExpeditioner.com. You can read his writings, watch his travel videos, purchase the book he co-edited or contact him via email at any time at TheExpeditioner.com.