In 2012, after a long history of problems with their existing host,[3] the English-language version community of Wikitravel also decided to fork their project.

The hierarchy includes: Attractions such as hotels, restaurants, bars, stores, nightclubs, tour operators, monuments, museums, statues or other works of art, city parks, town squares or streets, festivals or events, transport systems or stations, landscapes, bodies of water, and uninhabited islands are listed in the article for the place within which they are located, but they do not get their own articles.

Wikivoyage uses the free MediaWiki software (developed for Wikipedia) to allow internet-based editing without requiring registration.

At the time of transfer to WMF, Wikivoyage was available in German, Italian, English, French, Dutch, Russian, and Swedish language versions.

In January 2013, Portuguese and Spanish versions were created, followed in March by Polish and Romanian, in April by Hebrew and Ukrainian, in May by Greek, and in August by Vietnamese.

[7] The top ten Wikivoyage language projects by mainspace article count:[7] For a complete list with totals see Wikimedia Statistics:[8] The choice of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike copyright license is intended to allow simplified distribution by mention of the authors, without the need to state the complete license text.

The name is a portmanteau of the words "Wiki" (an Internet-based software system that allows change and extension of the text by any user) and "voyage", meaning travel, journey, or trip.

A year later the project was acquired by the for-profit Internet Brands, an operator of media and e-commerce sites.

Discontent increased in response to the management style of the new owners, which led to the contributors of the German- and Italian-language editions leaving to set up their own independent project, while forking the content on Wikitravel.

The Tages-Anzeiger[16] from Zurich and the Swiss radio station DRS1 reported broadly on the project and discussed its weaknesses.

[18][19][20] After lengthy discussion by users of all three communities, comments by their respective hosts, and confirmation by the Wikimedia Foundation that it would host a travel project if users wished, nearly all administrators and bureaucrats at Wikitravel decided to fork their existing work to Wikivoyage.

[21] The contents of Wikitravel in all languages and its related Commons-equivalent site (for images, video, and other media files) were downloaded on August 2, 2012, as a "database dump" in preparation for such a migration.

Forking is a normal or anticipated activity in wiki communities and is expressly permitted by the Creative Commons–Attribution–Share Alike (CC BY-SA) copyright license in use on sites such as Wikitravel.

MediaWiki, the wiki software used for Wikitravel, included that facility, although Internet Brands disabled the function shortly after this date in an attempt to prevent the data migration.

Wikivoyage stated that, freed of the need to maintain its servers, it would be able to benefit by increasing its work related to outreach, community support, discussion and information, and technical enhancements to the site's software.

[24][25] In September 2012, Internet Brands filed a lawsuit against one Wikitravel administrator, Ryan Holliday, and one Wikipedia administrator, James Heilman, accusing them of trademark breach and commercial misconduct in the proposals affecting that site, with the defendants and Wikimedia rejecting the case as an example of a SLAPP lawsuit—one that is undertaken without plausible legal grounds for the primary purpose of deterring, overwhelming, or frustrating people engaged in fully lawful actions.