Just launched: Fortnighter offers customized plans for passionate travelers

For the past few months, four of New York City’s most notorious movers and shakers have been hard at work: Alexander Basek, a contributor to Travel + Leisure, the New York Post and the co-author of several Fodor’s guidebooks; Colin James Nagy from the Barbarian Group, Noah Brier, entrepreneur and co-founder of Percolate; and one silent partner who works in music publishing.

Together, the four of them have collectively traveled well over half a million miles in the past year, so it only seems natural that they’ve launched Fortnighter, a site dedicated to providing travelers with custom-tailored itineraries packed with gems only a true wanderlust would know.

Whenever we travel, we frequently ask for recommendations from friends and associates, but not everyone has a well-versed contact that is interested in the same things. We’re seeking to make travel better and more insightful for everyone.

-Fortnighter

Unlike travel networks that sell both packages and advice, Fortnighter is only focused on delivering objective and high quality editorial content. The contributor team at Fortnighter consists of experts who have written for almost every major travel outlet, including the New York Times, the New York Post, Lonely Planet, Travel + Leisure, Condé Nast Traveler, Fodor’s, Time Out, New York Magazine and the San Francisco Chronicle. The writers focus on a few specific regions that they know best and create custom itineraries without bylines to ensure that their recommendations are not influenced by sales, press junkets or favors. The Fortnighter team then edits and vets each plan.

To use it: Sign up and enter your preferences into their questionnaire. Within one week you’ll receive a unique pdf with a daily rundown of what to see, where to eat and where to stay. A custom plan costs $100 for a three-day itinerary, $150 for a five-day and $200 for a seven-day. See a sample itinerary here.

While co-founder Colin Nagy admits, “this isn’t for everyone,” (looking at you backpackers) he’s betting a big swath of the population spends so much money on flights and hotels that they won’t want to leave the experience to chance, particularly for shorter trips when time is of the essence. If $100 sounds steep to tack onto your already mounting travel budget, we get it. But imagine your girlfriend has just asked you for a romantic weekend in Morocco. Are you going to just leave it up to search engines and serendipity to light her fire?

“I think there’s something awesome about giving people really good intelligence and helping them have a better trip. And I think the combination of specific questions and getting granular into what a person is into, combined with that high level of editorial curation makes for something special and interesting. Not everything is an algorithm, sometimes human knowledge and expertise is really worth paying for,” says Nagy.

Fortnighter wants to make your travels easier, more exciting and more personal. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than searches on the Internet or newspapers can accommodate. In a digital world, it’s still the human connections that really matter. Fortnighter is a site established by passionate travelers who really just want you to make the most out of your experience.

“While everyone is launching startups right now because they think they’re going to make a bajillion dollars, we’re launching this because it didn’t exist. If one person buys an itinerary I’m delighted. It’s a fun, bootstrapped, passion project and is just our way to make people’s lives a little more fun,” says Nagy.