The Huffington Post has launched a dedicated travel section called HuffPost Travel (www.huffingtonpost.com/travel). It covers all aspects of travel and starts off with a promising ad tie-up that offers sponsors exposure on both the HuffingtonPost.com website and on social media.

HuffPost Travel

In the launch announcement, HuffPo founder Arianna Huffington says “It will be a one-stop shop, bringing you up-to-the-minute travel news, travel tips and advice, the hottest deals, reviews of hotels, cruises, spas, and airlines, compelling photographs, blog posts about travel, and more.”

Kate Auletta, Travel Editor for Huffington Post, says she wants the new section to be about “moments we have when we travel: the good, the bad, the ugly. What inspires you? What amazes you? What do you even hate about other places?”

As for the content, it looks more Huffington Post and less of a stand-alone travel site with dedicated travel writers. A lot of the content comes from the army of Huffington Post contributors and celebrities. In this sense, it’s an aggregation of all the travel-related content that the Huffington Post was publishing anyway.  

As for the business model, HuffPost Travel starts off in beta with a sponsorship deal from Starwood Hotels & Resorts. In addition to the usual banner ads on content pages, Starwood will also get exposure on twitter and facebook when HuffPost Travel pages are shared by readers.

A special hashtag will be included in reader tweets that arise from Starwood sponsored pages on HuffPost Travel. The Huffington Post has set up a separate twitter account (@HuffPostTravel) for the new travel section. The Travel section even has its own twitter edition.

The Huffington Post was founded May 9, 2005 by Arianna Huffington, Ken Lerer, and Jonah Peretti as a liberal counter-point to the right-leaning Drudge Report. It has since morphed into a massive online portal that covers all walks of life with over 3000 contributors and over 24 million monthly page views and over 1 million comments each month.