Virtual Tourist is a free travel website with over one million registered members, providing travel reviews, photos, and recommendations. Advertising is the main source of income. Members can write articles, organize community get-togethers, and plan trips together. The site has a Travel Guide and Trip Planner feature to help users research and plan their trips.
Virtual Tourist, commonly referred to as VT, is a travel website that provides travel reviews, travel photos, and user-generated travel recommendations. The information provided is free. Advertising is the website’s main source of income. Over one million people are registered as members; the site also contains over one million reviews and over three million photos. Members often write informative articles for the site and organize community get-togethers and get-togethers.
Founded in 1999, the original purpose of Virtual Tourist was to publish travel tips and advice created by real tourists rather than travel agencies or destinations themselves. TripAdvisor Media Group bought the company in 2008. Virtual Tourist resembles many other social networking sites: Members have personal pages that allow them to post profile pictures, share bio information, contact other members, write reviews of various destinations, and view travel photos they have taken. This site also contains a forum page where members can start discussions to get travel tips or information from any registered member of the community. It should be noted that since the site and most of its members are based in the United States, the writing style and reviews may be based more on the perspective of American tourists.
The interactive nature of the site often leads members to plan trips together or arrange local get-togethers. Some of these meetings can be organized by the Virtual Tourist himself. Sometimes the site’s top ten travel-related lists attract the attention of mainstream media and even government officials of the places under discussion due to their humor, creativity, or characterization of the area.
Virtual Tourist has several features to facilitate the use of the site. First, the Travel Guide organizes all user-submitted reviews and recommendations based on location and other categories such as hotels, shopping, things to do, and local customs. Members rate these tips and rate a scale of one to ten based on how helpful they are. Additionally, members can use a feature called Trip Planner to identify places of interest, read and save reviews, and print information in the form of an itinerary—the sheer volume of information available may require users to spend a lot of time researching. The site allows members to scour multiple travel sites to find hotels, airfares, and transportation deals while booking travel.
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