Finding Crowd-sourced and Location-specific Travel Guides

Jenn Vargas, Creator and Wanderer of Wanderling, helps connect travelers with the creators of awesome destination-based content to inspire and inform their next adventure.

Wanderling is a community for crowd-sourced, location-specific guides and tips curated by travelers and content creators. On Wanderling, you can find, share, and vote for the best travel guides to specific destinations. Their mission is to connect travelers with guides from people who have visited, lived in, and experienced that location.

We thought this idea sounded pretty neat and wanted to ask Jenn a few more questions about what’s going on at Wanderling now!

What inspired you to create this startup?

As a traveler myself, I am always searching for recommendations, tips, (and warnings!) about my next destination from the travel community. I prefer guidance from a fellow traveler over a guidebook: I’d rather hear from someone who’s been there, done that, rather than from a paid guide. I believe other travelers can provide a more authentic perspective, and I trust travel blogs from fellow wanderlings rather than Lonely Planet articles. That said, digging through Google search results to find quality recommendations is such a hassle.

When I tried (and failed) to start my own travel blog and guide series, I realized just how difficult it is to stand out in the crowded travel space. So, I built Wanderling to solve both of my own problems – to help travelers find awesome content about the places they’re exploring and to help content creators get their work in front of the people who are looking for it.

Anyone can contribute to Wanderling and tag their post with a destination. To highlight the best content, the community can vote for their articles or recommendations and help them rise to the top. The community decides who has the best content for every destination. Headed to Cuba? Just search for Cuba on Wanderling and you’ll find the best content about Cuba as submitted and voted on by your fellow travelers. We have content for over 300 destinations from 100+ different travel content creators.

How did you build your startup?

Wanderling started as a weekend project for me! The idea has been bouncing around in the back of my mind for a few years, and I decided to finally buckle down and build it. Since then, I’ve been incorporating feedback from the community to keep improving and shaping it into something that’s super useful for both creators and consumers.

What makes your startup different from other similar startups out there?

Travel blogs aren’t a new thing, and sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp thrive on crowd-sourced recommendations. But nowhere can you aggregate original, travel-related content from other travelers and quickly sort through the noise to get the best, most trusted recommendations for a specific destination. Wanderling is different because it takes the most authentic content out there – tips from fellow travelers – and lets you get the very best recommendations for a particular destination quickly, without having to sort through pages of search results.

How did you get your startup off the ground and gaining traction?

Luckily, a lot of the work was done for me! There are some amazing travel writers and content creators out there. My goal was just to get these prolific creatives all in one place. Wanderling is a platform where everyone wins: if you’re working hard to create beautiful, well-researched guides that aren’t getting read, that can be an incredibly frustrating experience. Likewise, if you’re staying in a new city and striking out on finding the best hidden gems, we’ll help you save time and energy by elevating some of the best tips and location-specific insights. I think it’s a perfect match for a very vibrant community.

How is your startup changing the future of the industry or helping to make travel better?

Wanderling showcases awesome destination-based travel content from regular people with a face and a name and stories to tell. We put discovering and ranking content in the hands of the travel community to make travel more approachable, to open travelers to new destinations, and to inspire new adventures. It’s all about capturing and harnessing the massive brainpower, creativity, and adventurousness that makes this community so amazing.

Do you have any tips for new entrepreneurs who want to create a successful startup?

Sometimes the most successful startups come from the most obvious of opportunities. For me, Wanderling was inspired by my own problems that I wanted to solve. Inspiration can come from anywhere, and I think noticing the things that frustrate you is a good place to start! If something is bugging you, it probably bugs someone else too. Of course, having the follow-through and hustle to solve that problem is half the battle! But, in my experience, solving something you’re passionate about makes the hard work worth it.

Travel Start-Up is a monthly series that profiles unique online travel start-ups in the Travel Massive community around the world. You can connect with Jenn and Wanderling on Travel Massive, Facebook, and Twitter.