This Travel Site Plans the Perfect Getaway — Without Telling You Where You're Going
When planning a vacation, figuring out your destination is the first step — and sometimes the most agonizing part of all, especially when you’re traveling with at least one other person whose idea of "the perfect vacation" isn’t exactly the same as yours. If you’re game for surprises and letting someone else do all the planning, meet Jubel, a new travel site that operates a like a dating site, matching travelers up with their dream getaways.
While the concept isn’t exactly brand-new — Pack Up + Go has been successfully sending people on surprise three-day weekends across America for the past year via road trip, plane, train or bus with packages starting at between $400 and $800 per person — Jubel is upping the ante by opening up the world (literally) to its customers and customizing trips for however long they want to get away from it all. Best of all, the whole process is surprisingly simple.
You start by choosing the type of trip you want to take, or what Jubel calls a “Path" — there are six to choose from: Active Nature, Party Purist, Oceanist, Chilled Nature, Culturist or Jubeler (which is a mix of everything). Next, you complete a survey that'll help to further individualize your trip, where you can share any specific places you’d like to go or skip altogether, whether you want to stay in one place or are willing to keep the city-hopping going, how much of a surprise you’re truly comfortable with and your preferences in terms of hotels, transportation and other on-the-ground essentials. You’ll also answer a bunch of questions about what you want to see — jungle, forest, desert or snow — and give parameters in terms of time frame and budget limitations.
A few days later, according to Thrillist, Jubel will send you two proposals with very basic descriptions of where you’ll be and what you’ll be doing in order to keep that element of surprise firmly intact. Once you’ve found a vacation you can all agree on, you make a deposit, and Jubel gets to work.
A few weeks before you depart, you’ll receive your first Jubel Pack envelope, which will tell you where you’re flying and where you’ll be staying. You’ll find fresh envelopes at every place Jubel sends you, which will tell you what you’re doing next — in a way it's sort of like your very own travel reality show, no planning — or arguing — necessary.
While it would be easy to assume that any Jubel adventure would come with a five-digit price tag at minimum, the company is well-versed in budget travel. While Jubel co-founder/CEO José Pablo Toscano tells us that the final tally depends entirely on factors like what kind of adventure you're looking for, how far away you want to travel and the duration of the trip, he did offer some ballpark figures.
"The cheapest trip we have planned was a weekend getaway for $350. That being said, however, most of our 'Budget Trips' are around $1,000 to $2,000 inclusive of airfare for a 10-day multi-destination international trip," said Toscano.
For more about how it all works, check out the video below.
https://vimeo.com/169168815
H/T: Thrillist
