Wikitravel
Wikitravel is a web-based collaborative travel guide based on the wiki format and owned by Internet Brands. It was most active from 2003 through 2012, when most of its editing community left and brought their contributions to the nonprofit Wikivoyage guide.
Type of site | Wiki travel guide with media repository |
|---|---|
| Available in | Initially English, now also 20 other languages: Arabic, Catalan, Chinese, Dutch, Esperanto, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish |
| Owner | Internet Brands |
| Created by | Evan Prodromou Michele Ann Jenkins |
| URL | wikitravel |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Registration | Optional |
| Launched | July 2003 |
| Current status | Active |
Content license | CC BY-SA |
| Written in | MediaWiki software, made in PHP |
The site was launched by Evan Prodromou and Michele Ann Jenkins in 2003 as a multilingual effort aiming to cover all the globe's destinations. In 2006, Internet Brands bought the trademark and servers and later introduced advertising to the website. This move met opposition from users, with many German and Italian editors leaving in December 2006 for a newly established wiki, Wikivoyage.
In 2006, Wikitravel launched a free media repository known as Wikitravel Shared, and in 2007, it received a Webby Award for Best Travel Website. The same year, Wikitravel's founders began Wikitravel Press, a now-defunct project that published printed travel guides based on the website's content. The first print guides were released on February 1, 2008.
In 2012, in response to sustained dissatisfaction with Internet Brands' commercialization and technical support, a large portion of the editing community, including the founders, left and transferred their contributions to the Wikivoyage travel guide, which was relaunched as a Wikimedia Foundation–hosted project in January 2013. Since then, Wikivoyage has surpassed Wikitravel in edit count, page count, and global viewership.