Wikitravel is a web-based collaborative travel guide based on the wiki format and owned by Internet Brands.

[2] The site was launched by Evan Prodromou and Michele Ann Jenkins in 2003[3][4] as a multilingual effort aiming to cover all the globe's destinations.

[5] This move met opposition from users, with many German and Italian editors leaving in December 2006 for a newly established wiki, Wikivoyage.

In 2012, in response to sustained dissatisfaction with Internet Brands' commercialization and technical support, a large portion of the editing community, including the founders, left and transferred their contributions to the Wikivoyage travel guide, which was relaunched as a Wikimedia Foundation–hosted project in January 2013.

[12] On April 20, 2006, Wikitravel announced that it and World66 [de]—another open-content wiki travel guide founded in 1999—had been acquired by Internet Brands, a publicly traded corporation.

On April 1, 2008, Internet Brands added Google advertising to Wikitravel, with an opt-out procedure for registered users.

This move was opposed by individuals and by the Wikimedia Foundation as being an example of a SLAPP lawsuit—one undertaken without plausible legal grounds with a primary intent being to deter, overwhelm, or frustrate persons engaged in fully lawful actions.

Forking is a normal or anticipated activity in wiki communities and is permitted by the Creative Commons license in use on sites such as Wikitravel; the wiki software used for Wikitravel included that facility, although Internet Brands disabled the function shortly after this date to forestall the attempt at data migration or forking.

A significant part of the editing community including most of the administrators at the time, and the existing Wikitravel content for most languages resumed under the 'Wikivoyage' name as www.wikivoyage.org, as an ad-free and not-for-profit reference site in early 2013.