The inevitable side-effect to suffering from the mighty Travel Itch? Every day of every month is spent poring over photos of exotic resorts in Tunisia, drooling over Greek sunsets, and planning imaginary vacations in Peru. I spend so much of my time salivating over picture-perfect locations on Pinterest that I find the process of looking up hotels and booking holidays rather dreary. It just doesn’t sit well with my dreamy-eyed vision of that perfect holiday. The good news is, I’m not alone!
A group of travel professionals, with decades of experience, have recently dreamt of a photo-based portal for booking hotels. I first heard of Yonderbound from a friend who described it as Pinterest and Tripadvisor’s lovechild (What can I say, I have the most imaginative friends?!). I was already intrigued – so when Yonderbound got in touch with us last week and requested us to sample their website, how could Vid and I say no? 🙂
Yonderbound has over 3,80,000 hotels on their database – a veritable treasure-house for any travel-obsessed soul. I made an account and off I went. I browsed through dozens of photos and hotels. Here’s a couple of random things I love about Yonderbound :-
THE YONDERBOX (i.e. a stroke of genius)
Yonderboxes are Pinterest-style boards that can be used to pin hotels available on Yonderbound. Of course, you don’t need to book all those hotels. The Yonderbox functions as a scrapbook cum wishlist where you can jot notes, pin photos, and dream big. Can you guess the theme of my Yonderboxes?
Beach Bumming (I blame it on the cold, dreary weather in London!)
Lapland (Who doesn’t love dreaming about the Northern Lights?)
North Africa (Culture, history, colour – I LOVE North Africa)
EVERYTHING ELSE AT THE CLICK OF A BUTTON
Once your wish-lists are in place, you can refer to your notes and pick the hotel that takes your fancy. The best part is that Younderbound displays TripAdvisor reviews for every hotel on the side. It saves consumers the trouble of searching for individual hotels on TripAdvisor. Photos, reviews, and rates at the click of a button – 2015 is turning out to be a good year already 🙂
The site is still in Beta, so it’s limited to booking accommodation. I gave it a thorough trial and scored good deals in most cities. However I was unable to find accommodation for remote cities off the beaten track. Turns out the team at Yonderbound is addressing that lacuna as I type. This makes me happy.
In fact customers will soon be able to book entire trips, weekend getaways, and days out on the portal. I can’t wait to make my own Yonderbox on my favourite beaches and street art from around the world.
But the best part is yet to come – everyone can earn Yondercredits for booking on Yonderbound or recommending it to friends and family. These credits can be used to sponsor future trips – this gives me all sorts of ideas 😉 Move over Pinterest. I can see myself spending a lot more time on Yonderbound. I’m going Yonderbound-ing – who is coming along?
Why don’t you pop over to the Yonderbound website and see it for yourselves ? 🙂
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Are you struck by Wanderlust? Check out our Top 10 Reasons To Travel The World 🙂
This post was published in association with Yonderbound, who requested us to review their newly launched website. We are two extremely opinionated ninjas – so all views (good and bad) are entirely our own. Click on to read our full Disclosure Policy
Hey there! Thanks for sharing. I tried to set up a Yonderbox account and ran across some challenges. I have several recommendations…whom can I get in touch with?
Really? It was smooth sailing for us – try using the ‘contact us’ section on their website or just tweet them – the folks at Yonderbox are super responsive 🙂