TravelDragon has created a one-stop travel research center featuring exceptional toursand accomodations for discriminating travelers. Through partnerships with these resources. TravelDragon gives you the ability...
You've come to the right place! We sincerely appreciate your interest in TravelDragon.
We love the word “curate”. Personally, we could use a few less choices in our lives and to trust the offer. That’s why our favorite companies are Whole Foods Market and Apple Computers. We’ve yet to find a place on the web (or even offline) we trust for major travel decisions. We’re not talking about a quick weekend to Las Vegas, or where cheap hotel for backpackers in Hanoi, there are plenty of resources for that. We’re interested in relevant recommendations and resources for trips of a lifetime and trips that change your life.
So we thought we would start our company by offering you something we’ve been searching for. By connecting you with like minded travelers and great travel providers.
Members add reviews of Trips, Places and Providers; share stories, photos and videos from their trips and offer relevant insight to other travelers like them. Providers add current content as to what’s new in the field, provide helpful tips, and are responsible for keeping their information accurate; they also answer traveler’s questions and offer a wealth of knowledge based on decades of experience.
We create the platform for it all to work together. In this way everyone in the TravelDragon family contributes to making this a better place every day.
We believe and support the idea of openness and transparency consistent with the open source movement and the increasingly social web. We shy away from sites that tell us about great companies then hide their phone numbers or web address. We’re experienced enough to realize that big travel decisions don’t happen immediately. They take research, reading reviews, contacting references, and generally talking to or meeting with the company offering the tour or service.
We love creating partnerships, building off our passion and expertise and that of others. We believe this will be the core of our success. We like to talk with people who use the words “Open” and shy away from those who use “Exclusive”. We can only begin to imagine all the path’s we would like to lead TravelDragon down. In case it isn’t apparent, we have a lot of energy and commitment that comes from starting something that you believe in. Our partners share this level of energy and commitment around their own businesses.
You’ll notice our site focuses primarily on tours (mostly small groups-less than 16). We do offer properties (villas, dude ranches, broadband rentals, eco lodges) as well as “excursions” which are one day or less experiences (like a 3 hour wine tasting in Florence, a day cooking class in Paris or the golf trip of a lifetime in Scotland). We will expand these offerings as we grow. With 20+ years experience in providing small group tours we thought this was the best area to focus on and often the most difficult to find in one location. We support independent travel yet value companies who provide a well thought out itinerary based on years of experience in a country and local guides whom offer a through-the-back-door insight into a culture.
Currently we have approximately 140 travel providers we have invited to be on our site. We would appreciate your suggesting additional companies we should speak with and referring them to our site to see if there is a fit.
We sell Advertising and Features. Many providers are interested in targeting very specific types of travelers such as those interested in wine travel or mother-daughter offerings. Similarly advertisers look to strategically target their consumers. We hope to match your searches with appropriate ads and relevant featured offerings.
Most of the companies profiled have been industry friends who we respect and have known for many years. They are more than happy to pay us a small commission based on relevant leads or actual bookings. There is a level of trust in this that we appreciate your telling the providers where you found them and following up with us on your experience with the company. We do still believe in trusting your partners.
Ultimately we will be profitable if you, the honored member, as well as our partners, find us valuable and relevant. We are creating a place you return to, and we'd love it if you were to share with us what you would like to see on the site or how we can best cultivate our community of like minded souls.
We’ve invited over 100 of the top small and medium size travel providers in the world and loaded up 1000’s of detailed tour itineraries and unique accommodations. Each provider has a profile page which offer insight about the company (their vision, personality, videos, most popular trips, staff, affiliations, commitments to sustainable travel practices, testimonials and more). You always have the ability to contact the providers directly by phone or email offers the most likely conversion of the highly qualified lead that has been created.
We built the ultimate smart search engine to help you find the best trips anywhere in the world, all of which are located in our own database. You can turn some nobs on it after you search and refine the results around categories including active, learning, volunteer etc or based on price, group size, comfort or exertion.
We consistently have friends asking for our recommendation for a SEARCH LINKS bike tour in Ireland, a family safari in Tanzania, a train adventure through China, a cooking school in Sicily, a villa in Provence and a day wine tour out of Buenos Aires. Finding this through traditional broad search is a needle in the haystack so we're laser-focused on experiential travel.
As the dragon grows, you’ll be able to read past guest reviews of both trips and companies, filter your search by a variety of options including size of group, comfort and exertion level, commitment to responsible travel practices and of course price and length. Our members (both travelers and providers) will take on an increasing role the growth and direction of the site. We will also expand our providers and trips selectively based on your interests and suggestions.
On a geekier note, we're developing an open API (that's Application Programming Interface, a way for other web developers and applications to join the TravelDragon community), widgets and apps that will run on OpenSocial and Facebook. We're also working on some fun things with maps, since travelers always like to spin the globe and learn more when they are plotting future travel. These are the full plans, we'll continue to be very open with you on things we're working on even if they don't work out the way that we planned.
We’re offering tons of information and resources on the TravelDragon blog to educate and inform our travelers as well as our providers on how our travel choices and offerings can be more sustainable for the communities we travel to and the planet as a whole. We’ll continue to partner with industry leaders and innovators. We encourage dialogue and debate which we hope leads to understanding and appreciation.
Even the hosting for the big servers we're running TravelDragon on are powered by a hydroelectic dam.
Thank you for taking the time to get to know us!
If you'd like to learn more about us, then jet over to the about us page.