There's a new kid on the block, and boy, is she pretty. There are lots of travel websites and travel blogs out there, but Zingi Travel caught Luxury Travel's eye due to its immediately apparent blithe, fun approach to travel. After all, if we can't have fun while traveling, when can we have fun? Vacations are meant for relaxation and breaks from the workaday life. Zingi Travel's mission is to serve up "fresh destinations, tasty culture, and front row fashion," with easily navigable verticals that include Scoops, Slideshows, and the excellently named "Zingi Blingi." Such an intriguing newcomer deserves some time in the spotlight: Lena Katz, the Founder and co-owner of Zingi, is also its editor-in-chief. She graciously answered some questions about her newest venture.
What is Zingi, exactly?
Zingi's tag line is "Travel Pop" and that really explains the focus, in my opinion. It's travel viewed through a pop culture lens: colorful, sexy, fun, visually engaging, with a focus on personalities and lifestyles in many destinations.
How does your site differentiate itself from others?
We do tons of slide shows. Our editorial is concise, snappy and informal, somewhere between "blog" style and supermarket glossy. We have many exclusive celebrity features and interviews, all with a travel angle.
How long have you been around?
We launched in beta in August of 2010, and immediately got pickup from AOL Living and MSN Entertainment, plus many other sites including Disney Family.com and StyleHive. We then realized that the cross-genre "travel pop" concept would be a hit, but that our back end needed to be able to support all the traffic and interest we'd get. So in October we switched to a different CMS, server and development team--and relaunched in January. Our "official" ZingiTravel.com site went live only two weeks ago.
What are you most proud of?
We're profitable! And we've got major media pickup, which is always a major vote of confidence. Our first sponsored project was a roadtrip blog for Suzuki Motors. Suzuki gave us so much love on their Facebook and Twitter that it basically expedited the full relaunch of ZingiTravel.com. We appeared on ABC News Travel Now (television and online) the day we officially launched. And we're already doing a vacation giveaway, thanks to one of our founding sponsors, Villa Group Resorts.
What's the giveaway?
Oh yes, thank you for letting me plug this ... I am truly so happy to be able to offer this kind of prize bounty to the first fans of Zingi: We're currently running a 5-night/6-day vacation sweepstakes to Villa la Estancia in the Riviera Nayarit. I first visited the hotel long before launching Zingi, and it's so romantic and gorgeous ... the perfect Valentine's month giveaway. I strongly encourage you and your readers to enter here, at Villa Group Resorts.
Thank you, Lena. Zingi can be found, and followed, on Facebook and Twitter. Keep your eyes out for Zingi, it's a most impressive new travel site.
Jennifer W. Miner - Jennifer has years of travel writing experience, spoken at several national conferences, and more. See Jendeavor.com for more details.
