Travel startup Wanderfly lands a huge partnership with The New York Times

Traveling is one of life’s greatest pleasures. The exploration process allows us to learn about ourselves and the rest of the world at once. But when you know you want to get away, how do you decide where to go? Wanderfly is the digital version of spinning a globe and throwing out your finger to pick your next destination. The site acts like a Pandora of a travel, analyzing a destination’s DNA and mapping it to what user’s want.

In February, Wanderfly, a New York City based startup, unveiled a revamped website, which included a faster, more targeted search experience including new trip themes to help families plan vacations as well as adventurists and singles looking for the perfect trip. It also released a widget for 3rd-party sites and introduced user-generated content from Business Traveler magazine.

Hotels.com powers the site’s hotel search and Jetsetter offers Wanderfly users access to its hand-selected, verified vacations through its 24/7 collection and flash sales. And Quintessentially’s concierge service offers travelers access to tickets and reservations in over 50 Wanderfly destinations, from New York to Abu Dhabi. Wanderfly started as a beautiful idea; a search tool for wanderlust explorers. By leveraging its team’s talent and ability to make strategic partnerships within New York City, it’s grown into a powerful B2B tool as well.

This week, Wanderfly truly hit it big with a partnership with The New York Times. Yesterday, the online newspaper launched Wanderfly’s recommendation technology across its 1,000 travel destination pages. Now, each time a reader lands on a destination page, Wanderfly analyzes its unique travel characteristics and recommends 4 similar destinations (see image above). Wanderfly’s Christy Liu says the partnership has been in the works for months, and that they’re excited to help NYT engage readers and ultimately drive page views and ad dollars to the site.

Wanderfly also furthered its tourism board program by launching a search widget on Cool Capitals, a joint initiative between Amsterdam, Antwerp, Valencia, Vienna and Zurich tourism boards. And, Le Marais Hotel and Vivre joined as curators on Wanderfly, both bringing more lifestyle recommendations to the site.