‘Inspiration engine’ suggests travel possibilities

The march of the travel sites continues! Much the way Adioso aims to open up travel search to broader possibilities through a natural-language interface, so Wanderfly seeks to offer “travel inspiration” by offering tailored recommendations in just a few clicks. Launched just last week, Wanderfly’s streamlined interface focuses on three simple variables: the user’s budget, timeframe and interests. Icons representing specific themes help represent interests — which can range from food and culture to “eco-friendly” and nightlife — and users can keep their destination options completely open or limit them to a particular region or city. Wanderfly then searches 22 trusted sites — including Expedia, Foursquare, Yelp and Lonely Planet — to recommend a trip complete with destination, flight, hotel and activities. Travelers may customize these options and book through Expedia, or they can flip to the next suggested trip. They can also connect through Facebook to locate friends in any of their potential destinations. Now in beta, New York-based Wanderfly currently features more than 1,200 global destinations, with more to come. It’s also working on an iPad application as well as concierge packages, restaurant reservations, travel products and event tickets. In addition, Wanderfly plans to add more user-generated content, group-planning tools and a widget for outside travel parties to integrate into their sites. Clearly, there’s still plenty of room for innovation in the travel search arena — one to be inspired by, in more ways than one! 😉