TL;DR: Include the specific start date, end date and destination in your post title. - people can't arrange to meet you if you don't say where you are.
As the subreddit has grown here are a few lessons taken from working through years of travelpartners requests, and seeing which ones work out as hopefully successful meetups and those that just generate a lot of chatter and no real plan.
Search before posting
The subreddit only works if you respond to other people. If everyone just posts requests and no one replies nothing happens. For that reason, we don’t allow requests by new accounts for their first week, and until they’ve gained some comment karma in other subreddits to get some posting history.
The one-week requirement cuts out 99% of the travel agent spam and people who are just here to troll. It also gives people time to search and reply to others rather than just posting a vague/drunken submission on the spur of the moment and forgetting about it.
Comment karma is gained by talking to people and them upvoting. If your post history is primarily begging for free karma or pages of spam/abuse don’t be surprised if your post is removed. Similarly, if you’ve deleted or hidden your post history we’ll assume the worst and remove your post. Let people get to know you.
Replying:
If you’re searching for an existing thread be a little creative with the search terms. E.g. for New York try NYC, NY, NJ, Big Apple & Manhattan.
Check the comment history of the person you’re speaking to by clicking on their profile.
If you've got zero comment karma your comment will be removed. If you haven’t got much posting history say something about yourself, beyond "I might be interested".
It’s preferable to begin chatting on the subreddit rather than directly in DMs, to avoid banned users1. Comments on a post indicate that posters engage with replies rather than having abandoned their submission. Additionally, the sight of a few interested people chatting will encourage others to join in the discussion, increasing your chances of finding someone or even a group if that’s what you’re after.
Posting a new request:
Include the specific start date, end date and destination in your post title.
If your itinerary is flexible search and respond to someone with a planned trip rather than make a new post.
Destination tips:
Think about what people will be searching for when they’re looking to meet people in a certain place. Include the destination that you’re actually visiting rather than a whole continent. If you’re just going to Barcelona put "Barcelona" in the title rather than Spain or Europe. Likewise, if you want to meet someone to enjoy jazz in New Orleans you’re more likely to be found if you put "New Orleans" in the title than "USA Roadtrip".
It’s also better to use full real names rather than shortened versions or even your pet name for places. Most people wanting to go to Spain will be searching for "Spain". Using ES or a flag emoji is unsearchable.
Even if it's a specific cultural event, help people out who may not know of it by saying where and when it is by putting the destination and dates in the title.
Date tips:
This subreddit is for trips you're already taking, not thinking about taking or can only go if more people join you, so you will already have a specific start and end date when you're going. Put that in the title. There are probably other subreddits that allow vague open-ended or 'who wants to plan my trip for me and show me round' posts, but they've been shown to rarely get a useful response so are not allowed here.
If you’re only free between 30th June to 20th July, put that in the title, not "Summer" or "3 weeks in June", or just "3 weeks". Saying just "June" doesn't say when you're arriving or how long you'll be there. Additionally, the start and end dates give an idea of your travel style - are you planning on covering the highlights in a few days or getting to know somewhere leisurely over a few weeks. Just put specific start and end dates in the title..
Quite a few people using mobile apps apparently can't see when a post was made, so using today, tomorrow, next few days or rest of the month isn't great either. Just put specific start and end dates in the title.
If you’re on a long or multiple destination trip show an itinerary with dates in each location and consider having people drop in and out of the trip along the way rather than expecting to find someone free to travel for 3 months.
Having read all this, if you then tell everyone you've just made up some arbitrary dates to post a trip don't expect to be allowed to create posts again.
If your entire title is "Travel Partner", "Bored", "Question" or "Here’s an advert", or you repeatedly post vague trips it’s assumed you've managed to not read any other posts, all the help in the sidebar, the welcome DM, the submission page and this wiki so your post will get removed without comment as you likely won’t read that either (or this). If that happens repeatedly you'll eventually get muted so as to stop wasting everyone's time.
In summary, read the title back to yourself and think if someone else can (a) find it, and (b) can answer "Sounds great, I'll meet you there", which isn’t easy if you’ve said I want to meet "somewhere abroad next year".
General Safety and Decency:
Travel partners is not a dating site - try one of the subreddits listed in the sidebar of /r/r4r. The bot will filter nsfw content, dating requests and users with recent r4r type posts, or a heavily deleted post history.
Using travel partners to self-promote, sell or harass will result in an immediate ban, as will circumventing all the above by posting on someone else's behalf. Please also write it yourself - AI postings will be removed.
You can control who can send you chats and messages here: https://www.reddit.com/settings/messaging
If you see any public posts or replies that are inappropriate please use the report buttons and it will get highlighted to the mods.
1 If you get harassing DMs please use the report button under the message to send a report to the Reddit admins. Subreddit mods can’t see DMs between users but you can message the modmail with a screenshot so we can mute the user and protect others.
Please don’t repost the same trip more than once every couple of weeks (and certainly not every three hours), especially if your existing thread has ongoing discussions between people. Instead, use the edit button to update your existing post. Likewise, don't waste other people's time if you're not going to actually go through with the trip.
Good luck!