I’m currently enjoying a Cruel Summer at home. While I have a several trips between now and next April, they are mostly ‘two-fer’ trips (business trips with a side of personal fun). I won’t be going anywhere new but they are all enjoyable destinations that I know well. However, come April I will be celebrating a milestone birthday and that is just screaming for a sparkling new place to discover. I haven’t started planning, just vaporous ideas of when I want to travel and where. My planning will kick into high gear in another two months, I imagine.

Deciding on where to go can be a major time suck because there are so many amazing places and I can succumb to analysis paralysis when I start to search, compare, and dream. If I’ve written about destination selection once, I am sure I’ve written about it at least five times, including here. Choosing where to go is a lot of fun, but can be tiring.

Always looking to spend time searching for a place to go, I stumbled across Jauntaroo.com yesterday. With the tagline of Your Vacation Matchmaker™  this is a website that uses your selections to deliver targeted destination ideas.

Jauntaroo.com

The basic search lets you enter your departure airport, things you want to do, temperature preferences, budget per person and voila, it gives you destination options. The advanced search lets you add a fifth element and trip length into the decision matrix, narrowing your results.

I tried out several searches and was pleasantly surprised at how accurate the results were, given my preference choices. I especially liked the feature to select destinations from an overall search by Europe, USA, North America, Other (image closeup below)

Jauntaroo.com

My major complaint is the inability to enter dates. Maybe I missed that option, but all the results returned were for August 2017 travel. That can be problematic, as airfares and lodging rates vary by season. That can be overlooked in light of their charitable focus.

That focus is called ‘Travel With A Cause’. Each month Jauntaroo.com chooses a travel-related charity and donate $1 each time a trip is booked through the site. You can learn more about the charity angle, here.

What I love:

• The charitable slant to travel bookings
• The ability to search by temperature
  • Sometimes I WANT to go somewhere cold

What I like:

• The ability to search on cultural activities, outdoor pursuits, lack of crowds,etc
• Being able to further segment the results by continent (ish)
• Target grading icon (Best, 2nd Best, 3rd Best)
• To Do details in the destination breakdown (click the destination photo to get there)

What I don’t like:

• No ability to search by dates
• Booking is through the Jauntaroo portal on Expedia
  • I’ve had too many issues with Expedia to make me super comfortable with this service
• Some of the destination details are incorrect, so take them with a grain of salt.
• None of their social media accounts have been updated in 4 years, so it doesn’t look like they are in business BUT the search still works and the estimated airfare is pretty accurate.

Overall, I think it’s a great find and will make searching for a destination IF they are still a viable, active business.

Now, it’s your turn. Where do YOU think I should go for my birthday? Sound off in the comments and thanks for stopping by JavaAndJunket.com!