Interview: Wikipedia's travel site Wikivoyage launches today amidst big hopes
Skift Take
The two travel wikis, one advertising free and one commercial, will battle it out for readers. But, for all of each wiki's collaborative writing and editing, there is still something very appealing to be said about an insightful, individually written travel guide that can enable you to smell the aroma of the baguette as it just starts to fill the village square.
Six months after some Wikitravel administrators broke ranks with the site's parent company Internet Brands and began planning an advertising-free travel guide, Wikivoyage officially launched today.
The official debut of the Creative Commons license-driven travel guide comes on sister company Wikipedia's 12th birthday. But, SEO-hog Wikipedia will be giving its young sibling plenty of gifts for the occasion in the form of ample promotion from Wikipedia pages.
Meanwhile, the spurned Wikitravel, which unsuccessfully sought a partnership with Wikivoyage's sponsor, the Wikimedia Foundation, and sued on several fronts for alleged intellectual property violations, has changed the introduction on its homepage to emphasize that, "Since 2003, Wikitravel is the original, free, complete, up-to-date and reliable worldwide travel guide, and is the premier travel wiki on the Internet."
Let the competiton between the two travel wikis, as well as with commercial travel guides such as Lonely Planet, commence.
To mark Wikivoyage
