Wander helps you travel spontaneously – to a budget

My favorite feature in SkySkcanner is the ability to pick a destination airport, and see where in the world you can fly to, and at what cost. I actually once planned an entire trip around Europe using this tool, which took me to Switzerland, Italy, Malta, France, and Belgium.

Wander takes this to its logical conclusion, allowing you to spontaneously find holidays to a specific budget. Just tell it your origin airport, and the dates you can to travel, and how much you can afford, and it will return back with a list of potential destinations.

Search results are gorgeously illustrated with photos of each potential place to visit. When you click through, they’re annotated with information about the weather and temperature of the place — so you can avoid getting washed out on your long-awaited vacation.

The ability to refine search results is limited. While you can sort destinations based on what continent they’re in, flights based on their duration, and hotels by their price, there’s no option to filter by airline, alliance, or hotel group — which is a bit of a bummer if you have status. But then again, if that’s the case, you probably aren’t all that price-sensitive, and you likely wouldn’t use this site.

You also can’t sort by star rating, meaning that you see a lot of grotty youth hostels mixed in with respectable chain hotels. Although that would be the case if you searched on a traditional hotel search engine, like Booking.com or Hotels.com.

As with anything, it’s easy to get stuck in a habit. If you find yourself visiting the same place on vacation each year, and you want to visit somewhere new, Wander will give you the inspiration, while acknowledging your budget.

Variety, after all, is the spice of life.