About Us

Who We Are

VIVA is an online community of adventurous international travelers that love to journey off the beaten path and have compelling stories and information to pass on to others. With a diverse editorial staff headquartered in Quito, Ecuador, V!VA Travel Guides is reinventing the traditional travel guide from the ground up.

Find out more about the V!VA Staff.

What We Believe

We believe that traveling can be one of life’s most rewarding experiences and that cultural connections made while traveling can make the world a better place. We believe that the collective wisdom of travelers and professional writers and editors can provide the most helpful information for planning a unique and unforgettable trip.

What We Do

VIVA’s mission is to inspire travelers and enable a superior travel experience by providing more up-to-date, trustworthy and relevant information than currently available through traditional printed guidebooks.

Printed guidebooks were the golden standard for obtaining trustworthy travel information before the age of the Internet. Although they remain the most useful tools for detailed trip planning, they suffer from three primary weaknesses:

1) Printed guidebooks are chronically out-of-date, as the updating cycle for most is 3 to 5 years.

2) They suffer from a single author bias and fail to effectively integrate the experiences and recommendations of diverse travelers.

3) Their content isn’t freely available on the Internet. One must purchase a hefty, often expensive paper book.

VIVA is building a better travel guide by solving the above problems. We combine the power of user-generated content, social networking and web 2.0 technologies with the traditional printed travel guidebook to enable travelers to plan and experience the best trips possible, catered to individual tastes.

An Invitation

VIVA invites you to participate in the creation of a better travel guide. Open a free account on our website and get started sharing insight and opinions with other travelers about the most spectacular places to visit on the planet, then see your words in print!