Dating, travel, or worse? The truth of Miss Travel

By Erik Bergin on May 1, 2012

TRAVEL PARTNERS 
The social travel website Miss Travel made headlines around the world when it was launched in April, 2012. The idea behind the business is easy enough to understand. Broke, and presumably good looking, women can use the site to hook up with wealthy, and presumably single, men who want travel company. The New York Daily News ran the headline ‘Is Miss Travel website a front for prostitution?’, citing a critic who suggests the site is a “giant window for dishonestly and coercion”.

The founder, dating website entrepreneur  Brandon Wade, says, defending his project, that “escorts are not allowed to use the website. There’s no money exchanged. And there’s no sex discussed on the website at all. So for people to sort of link it or compare it with prostitution is really quite a stretch.”

→RELATED: Users tell their own stories: What we think of Misstravel

Connecting people with the common interest of traveling is always a good idea in itself, that is what websites like Tripadvisor do all the time. And dating online can hardly be described as a shady activity these days. But what if Miss Travel is something else, going beyond the accepted forms of social interaction online?

To get an idea of what Miss Travel is all about, we registered Angela, 29, a 5″4′ (163 cm) blonde single girl with no children, carrying “a few extra pounds” on her body, who lives in Baltimore, Maryland. She is a social drinker, does not smoke, defines herself as an “attractive female” who wants to go to places like San Francisco, Beijing and Sydney. So far so good.

Initially, Miss Travel gives women the choice of two different types of accounts, judging if they are “Generous”, and thus are prepared to pay for their own trips, or if they are “Attractive” and want to travel for free.

After the initial registration is done, a few other alternatives with good looks in focus present themselves. It is possible, Miss Travel claims, for beautiful women to travel for free using the site. One way is obviously to hook up with a partner with a thick wallet who will pay for tickets. The other way is to earn Frequent Flyer Points. This is done by persuading a ‘Travel Sponsor’ to send you Frequent Flyer miles as a gift. Once you have 25,000 miles, “you will qualify to transfer these miles to your Frequent Flyer program with any of the major Airlines, and exchange them for free travel,” Miss Travel states.

It is also possible to upgrade one’s account to become a paying customer, with better possibilities to interact with others in exchange.

 

It is a smart business model in a way, in that in connects a row of general interests of the modern human being in one place. Dating is obviously one, traveling another. Spending time with beautiful people is a third. For women, there is also the hunt for flyer miles in order to make it possible to travel for free.

On the negative side, Miss Travel spins hard on the theme of good looks and being “attractive”. Ugly people do not bother, but for perhaps very wealthy males. You could argue that Miss Travel exploits the rush in today’s society towards ever slimmer waists, bigger breasts and competition with outer good looks, leaving a large portion of mankind behind.

But then, doesn’t all dating websites do exactly that? Dating, especially online, is all about pictures and looks, at least until two people get to know themselves better and become a couple. Maybe during a trip. The same goes for the accusation that Miss Travel is a window for prostitution. Of course it can be that, along with any online social media.

 

So what about Angela from Baltimore, Maryland? 24 hours after her registration, she was still waiting to have her profile picture approved by the Miss Travel staff.

And without a picture, no free rides.

 

About Erik Bergin

The editor of the Traveling Reporter works as a business news editor, and is a frequent traveler. When not doing any of that, he spends time on his boat and tries to figure out where to travel next. Two of his top destinations are the Philippines and San Francisco. Email Erik! Follow the Traveling Reporter at Stumbleupon, Tumblr, Chime In, Pinterest, Google+, Weibo, Storify, Facebook, Traveldudes, Myspace.

• Natalia Pestell

  In fact the idea of this is GREAT and very HONEST and SINCERE. I am a member and I do think guy MUST pay for spending time with a beautiful women and THIS shows either he is a GENTLEMAN or NOT. The problem I am having with a website is OPPOSITE to what Brendon says. I am young ( 28) gorgeous model (professional model who appear in magazines)and yes, there are many guys who write to me and I write to them too. First I found out about this site half a year ago. I WAS NOT at any of the travelings.I don’t know why but HUGE amount of guys who go there ( I would say around 99%) are men who either do not have money or extremely greedy and their way of thinking goes this way: OK, I HAVE REGISTERED IN THAT WEBSITE, NOW I IMAGINE MYSELF A MILLIONAIRE AND PLAY THIS GAME WITH MYSELF.SO I WILL PLAY AN IDIOT AND EXPECT WOMEN TO TREAT ME LIKE A KING, COME TO ME SPENDING THEIR OWN AND WILL DO EVERYTHING BASICALLY JUST TO GET MY ATTENTION. That is in fact how it UNFORTUNATELY REALLY IS. You will meet there students, then broke guys with mental problems who can not even get ANY girl in their city at all, married players, who is not determined of what they want till the end, they have wives and they want sex, but they are not willing pay any cent even for anything and if they decide to buy you a ticket for a week, then they expect whole 24/7 sex with you for FREE of course.There really were some businessmen there -not totally broke dreamers guys who want to feel themselves a millionaire at least in the internet, but after I stated very clear that they CAN NOT count on sex with me just because they pay for tickets, all of them disappear. How about excluding THOSE guys from the website?????I hope my comment will be read by Brandon and he will improve the website, untill it will go to the higher level and really include the individuals who are serious about the website and not those who use it just to play around. I would recommend him to RAISE the price for membership or create the website where month of membership would cost at least 300 bucks and chose really good looking women there.
  Thanks everyone for reading my comment.

  • http://travelingreporter.com/ Traveling Reporter

    Thanks Natalia for that insight, interesting indeed. Would be good if more people would share their experiences with the service.

• Ghilant

  Hey there.
  Wanted to share my recent experience. I found http://www.globogirls.com very randomly.
  From the beginning it looked to me kinda strange, girls looked too beautiful to
  be true but to my surprise I spoke to several of them with cam and even added
  them on facebook later, though still didn’t organize a trip together. Basically
  what I want to say is that site is full of people who are willing to get in
  touch and travel. But my advice is to be realistic, internet is like a
  roulette-without trying there’s no champagne.

  • http://travelingreporter.com/ Traveling Reporter

    Hey Ghilant, interesting. Stay in touch and report if you ever get yourself out on an actual trip with this site, or any other. I’m sure it would be worth telling about.