This month, I sat down and met with the folks behind a new travel start-up, Yonderbound, and quickly came to the conclusion that they have a concept that is going to make booking travel a lot easier and more convenient for people. So, I signed on to partner up with them and you’ll be hearing a good bit more about them here in the coming months.
Here are a few of the reasons why I’m a believer.
I am still playing with the interface, but I love how easy it is to use. At the core of their concept are Yonderboxes.
The Yonderbox
Each Yonderbox is like a travel scrapbook, a place where you keep hotel ideas and notes for your trip. They make travel planning much easier and they save automatically so you can pick up from where you left off.
So, here is one of the Yonderboxes I’ve created as an “expert contributor” to their site: Best Hotels in Jordan. As you no doubt know if you’ve been following along this website much in the last few years, Jordan is one of my favorite countries. I’ve been five times now, I believe, including going back just a few months ago.
Unlike other booking sites like booking.com or Expedia, what Yonderbound allows you to do is to research your upcoming trip over a period of time (their research indicates that people research for up to two months before booking things, which sounds about right to what my experience is from talking to people).
And unlike those other sites, the Yonderbox that you create on their site allows you to save your ideas of places to stay in one location on the interwebs, instead of having to make multiple bookmarks in your browser or old-school hand written notes of places you might want to stay.
Organizational Godsend
For someone as inherently travel disorganized as I am, being able to keep things organized this way makes a ton of sense.
It also helps they have 383,693 hotels in 192 countries to choose from, from 5-star properties to hostels, so it works for any form of travel.
After you’ve done your weeks of research and figured out where you are going to stay, you can book right from your saved Yonderbox. Simple, all-in-one-place, and they’ve got the best prices in the market.
I like simple and organized. I wish more of my life was like this
More to Come
What excites me the most about being in a long-term partnership with Yonderbound (I will get a small percentage of any bookings you make using their site, if you click through one of my links to them — no extra charge to you at all, it comes from their end), is not only the functionality they have at this stage, it is the things they are hoping they can bring to the table down the road.
In the future, they are aiming to be more than a hotel booking agent. They are going to try to incorporate some linkings to day tours and other options you will be able to do on your trips. For me, this is perfect, because it will allow me to create very full Yonderboxes that will allow readers and fans to much more closely “do” a place in ways that I endorse.
They are in the early stages of their tech development on this, and I think I might actually even be more excited than them about how their concept could merge the entire trip planning process to one location to keep you organized.
Then again, that might just come from my personal life disorganization.
But test it out yourself. It is totally free to sign up for a Yonderbound account. You can go in and start creating your own Yonderboxes of your personal travel ideas today. Again, no charge to do that. If you end up liking it as much as I do, I hope you end up using it regularly and tell your friends about it.
I’m a believer. I hope you like using it as well.
____________________________________________________
As I said a few times in this post, I’ve entered into a business arrangement with Yonderbound, but my opinions about their site and their future in the industry are my own. As to my confession of travel disorganization… you already knew that, right?
Interesting, I’ll have to look into it although I’ve been saying that about trover for like 3 months… too little time!
I know, so little time to check out all the good stuff. For me, the ability to save things on one list helps me out with this particular concept.
Seems like a cool idea to save all your stuff in one place!
That is the main reason I like it — for now. The additions of new items is going to make it even better.
I like it very much new and innovative blog. I am keen lover of travel news always.