Travel To The World's Best Festivals At Fest300

SAN FRANCISCO, July 16, 2013 - Today, Joie de Vivre Hospitality founder Chip Conley officially launched Fest300, a point-of-view website that brings the world's best festivals to life in one place for the first time. Selected by Conley and his team of seasoned travel and festival experts with pedigrees from Lonely Planet, Frommer's and beyond Fest300 presents a curated list of the world's best festivals with a daily magazine in vibrant words and pictures.

From celebrations of music, film, and food, to rituals of the sacred, silly and profane, Fest300 explores these global events with detailed reviews, insightful and entertaining editorial, and compelling video and photography. Central to Fest300's mission is to engage and inspire a community of "culturally curious" travelers to TAKE THE PLEDGE and attend at least one festival in the coming year halfway around the world, or just around the corner.

Fest300 Inspiration? "Given the momentum of growth in festival culture around the world, there's a nascent movement afoot. Fest300.com is a URL, yet people are seeking more IRL (In Real Life) experiences that give them a sense of meaning," says founder and editor-in-chief Conley. "I've experienced 'collective effervescence,' the positive experience of losing oneself in a group ecstatic moment, in my travels from Bali to Brazil to Burning Man. But, when I looked for a place that documented the most diverse, iconic gatherings and spectacles of our time, there wasn't one. We're creating that place at Fest300."

Why 300? Fortune touts the 500 biggest companies. Forbes hails the 400 richest people. Fest300 celebrates the best experiences. In curating this living museum, the editors are not dependent on one particular genre, part of the world, or time of year, given there are hundreds of thousands of festivals some new and some more than 2,000 years old. Fest300 takes you everywhere, from Burning Man's scorching Nevada desert, to 30-degree below zero temperatures at China's Harbin Ice & Snow Festival, to the humid banks of the Ganges River at India's Kumbh Mela.

Fest300 intends to publish its list annually, inviting the Fest300 community to crowd