Last year it was announced that the commercial Wikitravel and Wikivoyage, which previously left Wikitravel, would join Wikipedia's parent organization; the WikiMedia Foundation. On January 15, Wikivoyage was officially launched. Travel guide wikis will finally get a place on the main stage of open content and crowdsourcing. New opportunities for the tourist sector, but also the beginning of the end for publishers such as Lonely Planet ?
History Travel Guide Wikis
Travel guide wikis are not new. As early as 2003, ' Wikitravel ' was founded by Evan Prodromou and Michele Ann Jenkins. list to data In 2005, this site was sold to the for-profit Internet Brands for a whopping $1.7 million . Apparently, travel guide information is big business, because Wikitravel still has a daily global Alexa siterank of 3,739 as of early 2013 .
Due to the commercial takeover, the German community left and continued independently and non-profit under the flag Wikivoyage . In 2012, the English-speaking community of Wikitravel also decided to switch to Wikivoyage and at the same time a partnership with the Wikimedia Foundation was announced.
Wikivoyage
Tourist information is taking off
Now, January 2013, Wikivoyage has been officially launched and the first results are impressive. In two weeks they managed to pass the traffic of Wikitravel with an Alexa rank of 930 ! ( NU.nl for example is at place 795 ). Tourist information can take off even further under the flag of the WikiMedia Foundation.