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Travel 2.0
A travel website is a website that provides travel reviews, trip fares, or a combination of both. Over 1.5 billion people book travel per year, 70% of which is done online. Categories Categories of travel websites include: ;Travelogues and blogs: People writing travel blogs about their own experiences, sometimes including advice for travelling in particular areas, or in general. ;Review websites: Some examples of websites that use a combination of travel reviews and the booking of travel are TripAdvisor, Priceline.com, Liberty Holidays, and Expedia. ;Service providers: Individual airlines, hotels, bed and breakfasts, cruise lines, automobile rental companies, and other travel-related service providers often maintain their own web sites providing retail sales. Many with complex offerings include some sort of search engine technology to look for bookings within a certain timeframe, service class, geographic location, or price range. ;Online travel agencies: Travel agency websi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Website
A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wikipedia. All publicly accessible websites collectively constitute the World Wide Web. There are also private websites that can only be accessed on a private network, such as a company's internal website for its employees. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, education, commerce, entertainment or social networking. Hyperlinking between web pages guides the navigation of the site, which often starts with a home page. Users can access websites on a range of devices, including desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones. The app used on these devices is called a Web browser. History The World Wide Web (WWW) was created in 1989 by the British CERN computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guide Book
A guide book or travel guide is "a book of information about a place designed for the use of visitors or tourists". It will usually include information about sights, accommodation, restaurants, transportation, and activities. Maps of varying detail and historical and cultural information are often included. Different kinds of guide books exist, focusing on different aspects of travel, from adventure travel to relaxation, or aimed at travelers with different incomes, or focusing on sexual orientation or types of diet. Travel guides can also take the form of travel websites. History Antiquity A forerunner of the guidebook was the ''periplus'', an itinerary from landmark to landmark of the ports along a coast. A ''periplus'' such as the ''Periplus of the Erythraean Sea'' was a manuscript document that listed, in order, the ports and coastal landmarks, with approximate intervening distances, that the captain of a vessel could expect to find along a shore. This work was possibly ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hospitality Club
Hospitality Club (HC) was a hospitality exchange service (a gift economy network for finding homestays whereby hosts were not allowed to charge for lodging) accessible via a website. History The first hospitality exchange service based on internet technology was Hospex.org in 1992 from Poland, which was later folded to Hospitality Club. Hospitality Club was founded in July 2000 in Koblenz, by Veit Kühne. In 2005, a disagreement between some members of Hospitality Club and its founder led to the foundation of BeWelcome. Many HC members, who became distinguished volunteers within Couchsurfing (so-called ''CS ambassadors''), left HC towards CS because of its missing legal status and insufficient management transparency. In February 2006, Kühne was working full-time on Hospitality Club. In the spring of 2006, the hitherto biggest HC-Party took place in Riga counting 430 participants from 36 countries. As of July 2006, the site had 155,000 members. This number grew by around ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Friendship Force International
Friendship Force International (FFI) is a nonprofit organization with the mission of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, friendship, and intercultural competence via homestays. The organization operates in more than 60 countries and in 6 continents, with 15,000 active members and over 300 annual programs, called "Journeys". The organization holds continuing fundraising campaigns and has a goal of increasing membership from 15,000 to 25,000 people. History The program got its foundation in a project established by Presbyterian minister Wayne Smith and then-governor of Georgia Jimmy Carter in 1973, after organizing an exchange program with Pernambuco, Brazil in which the Brazilians stayed in the Georgia Governor's Mansion. FFI was unveiled on March 1, 1977, by President Jimmy Carter and Smith at a White House gathering of state governors. First Lady Rosalynn Carter served as Honorary Chairperson until 2002. On July 4, 1977, the first exchange took place; it ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
CouchSurfing
CouchSurfing is a hospitality exchange service by which users can request homestays or interact with other people who are interested in travel. It is accessible via a website and mobile app. It uses a subscription business model, and while hosts are not allowed to charge for lodging, members in some countries must pay a fee to access the platform. History Conception (1999–2004) Couchsurfing was conceived by computer programmer and New Hampshire native Casey Fenton in 1999, when he was 21 years old. The idea arose after Fenton found a cheap flight from Boston to Iceland but did not have lodging. Fenton hacked into a database of the University of Iceland and randomly e-mailed 1,500 students asking for a homestay. He received between 50 and 100 offers and chose to stay at the home of an Icelandic rhythm and blues singer. On the return flight to Boston, he came up with the idea to create the website. He registered the couchsurfing.com domain name on 12 June 1999. Fenton was also ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BeWelcome
Social networking services where hosts do not receive payments are called hospitality exchange services (HospEx). The relationships on hospitality exchange services are shaped by altruism and are related to the cyber-utopianism on the Web in its beginnings and to utopia in general. Non-profit hospitality exchange services have offered scientists access to their anonymized data for publication of insights to the benefit of humanity. Before becoming for-profit, CouchSurfing offered four research teams access to its social networking data. In 2015, non-profit hospitality exchange services Bewelcome and Warm Showers also provided their data for public research. The biggest HospEx platform in 2012, ''"CouchSurfing appears to fulfil the original utopian promise of the Internet to unite strangers across geographical and cultural divides and to form a global community"'' CouchSurfing used utopian rhetoric of "better world," "sharing cultures," and of much better access to global flows ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Airbnb
Airbnb, Inc. ( ), based in San Francisco, California, operates an online marketplace focused on short-term homestays and experiences. The company acts as a broker and charges a commission from each booking. The company was founded in 2008 by Brian Chesky, Nathan Blecharczyk, and Joe Gebbia. Airbnb is a shortened version of its original name, AirBedandBreakfast.com. The company has been the subject of criticism for lack of regulations and enabling increases in home rents. History After moving to San Francisco in October 2007, roommates and former schoolmates Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia came up with the idea of putting an air mattress in their living room and turning it into a bed and breakfast. In February 2008, Nathan Blecharczyk, Chesky's former roommate, joined as the Chief Technology Officer and the third co-founder of the new venture, which they named AirBed & Breakfast. They put together a website that offered short-term living quarters and breakfast for those wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
9flats
9flats is an online marketplace enabling people to lease or rent short-term lodging. The company does not own any lodging; it is merely a broker and receives commissions from both guests and hosts in conjunction with every booking. The site competes with Airbnb. It has over 50,000 members and 30,000 hosts in 104 countries. History 9flats was launched by German internet entrepreneur Stephan Uhrenbacher – founder of Qype, and former head of northern European operations for lastminute.com. The founders secured funding from venture capital fund E.ventures (CityDeal/Groupon) and launched 9flats.com in February 2011 with an inventory of 5,000 places. In May 2011, 9flats secured another round of investment from venture capital funds Redpoint Ventures (HomeAway), ProFounder (ex- lastminute.com) and Greycroft Partners, bringing the total funding to US$10 million. In late 2011, 9flats became the first well-known European or North American company in the social travel space to ope ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Homestay
Homestay (also home stay and home-stay) is a form of hospitality and lodging whereby visitors share a residence with a local of the area (host) to which they are traveling. The length of stay can vary from one night to over a year and can be provided for free (gift economy), in exchange for monetary compensation, in exchange for a stay at the guest's property either simultaneously or at another time ( home exchange), or in exchange for housekeeping or work on the host's property ( barter economy). Homestays are examples of collaborative consumption and the sharing economy. Homestays are used by travelers; students who study abroad or participate in student exchange programs; and au pairs, who provide child care assistance and light household duties. They can be arranged via certain social networking services, online marketplaces, or academic institutions. Advantages and disadvantages Homestays offer several advantages, such as exposure to everyday life in another location, the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust Limited, Scott Trust. The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of ''The Guardian'' in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of ''The Guardian'' free from commercial or political interference". The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for ''The Guardian'' the same protections as were built into the structure of the Scott Trust by its creators. Profits are reinvested in journalism rather than distributed to owners or shareholders. It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK. The editor-in-chief Katharine Viner succeeded Alan Rusbridger in 2015. Since 2018, th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Las Vegas
Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vegas Valley metropolitan area and is the largest city within the greater Mojave Desert. Las Vegas is an internationally renowned major resort city, known primarily for its gambling, shopping, fine dining, entertainment, and nightlife. The Las Vegas Valley as a whole serves as the leading financial, commercial, and cultural center for Nevada. The city bills itself as The Entertainment Capital of the World, and is famous for its luxurious and extremely large casino-hotels together with their associated activities. It is a top three destination in the United States for business conventions and a global leader in the hospitality industry, claiming more AAA Five Diamond hotels than any other city in the world. Today, Las Vegas annually ranks as o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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