Have hottie? Will travel
Posted by chicagotribune.com on April 27 2012

"Traveling." So, that's what they're calling it these days?

MissTravel.com, a new site that launched in early April, aims to pair the beautiful people of the world with the deep-pocketed for travel on the rich partner's dime.

Visitors to the site are greeted by a comely brunette sitting knock-kneed atop a pink suitcase in front of a map of the world. A brief animated video breaks down the site's essential goal, to pair the rich and the beautiful as travel partners. The cartoon cutie (also a brunette, just for the record) plys the potential attractive partner with images of five-star resorts and restaurants in exotic locales to be paid for by "doctors, lawyers, bankers, athletes, executives, entrepreneurs, and millionaires" looking to travel.

Those who opt to sign up for the site must pick between two types of accounts, Attractive or Generous. Attractive accounts are free but to sign up as a Generous will cost when sending messages, perhaps not surprisingly. Users can then post pictures of themselves and other information like age, religion and education just like other online dating profiles.

Users can also list what sort of travel destinations they are interested in and what types of relationships they are seeking including "no strings attached," "sugar baby/sugar daddy" and "discreet affair."

While it's possible for men to sign up as Attractives and women as Generous, the fact that every wealthy member on the site is portrayed as a male and every attractive member a female is telling, to say the least. A cursory inspection of the publicly available profiles didn't turn up any male Attractives or female Generous.

"Men and women can sign up as both as an Attractive or Generous user. However, 99 percent of the Generous users signing up are men and only 1 percent are women," said Brandon Wade, the founder and CEO of MissTravel. "Our website also caters to men seeking men, which accounts for about 6.5 percent of the overall web traffic."

While some Generous choose to list their income and net worth, many opt not to say publicly and there is currently no confirmation process of the wealthy's self-described wealth. Non-buyer beware.

The site is the brainchild of Wade, the founder and CEO of other dating websites likeSeekingArrangement.com and WhatsYourPrice.com. Born in Singapore, Wade describes himself as a "nerd" growing up, lonely and afraid of talking to women. He says his mother advised him to study hard to achieve the "financial means to be generous." Studies at MIT followed, where he found his first girlfriend and first kiss at 21. Afterwards Wade decided to use his tech skills to implement his mother's advice. He created SeekingArrangment.com to pair "sugar daddies" up with female "sugar babies" who want to be pampered.  It's also where Wade met his wife.

In spite of the seemingly transparent aims of some of the male and female users, Wade insists MissTravel not an escort service. A page linked two clicks off the home page issues a disclaimerprohibiting escorts from using the site to sell sex.

"People confuse the difference between dating a generous man with a one-hour encounter with a hooker-seeking John. The former is a gentleman who respects women, while the latter exploits women and are not welcome on my websites," said Wade. "We have implemented software that will help us identify pictures that escorts use on various escort sites to help us identify them and boot them off."

An inspection of potential travel destinations did not turn up very many seeking or offering trips to Chicago so it's doubtful that MissTravel will be lining Chicago coffers with luxury and sales tax dollars. Though a 30-year old Chicago Generous by the screen name of "manimal" is willing to fly a beautiful lady to the Windy City so anyone looking for discount flights in for Lolla may have just found exactly what they're looking for.

Or, maybe not.


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