Local businesses
Built with local businesses, not around them
Published 2026-10-07 · 4 min read · TRVLSOCIAL
The people who make travel worth doing are usually the ones the industry squeezes hardest. We're trying a different arrangement.
A guide with twenty seasons of canyon knowledge, a dive shop that maintains its own compressor, a cook whose table outclasses the resort's — these are the businesses that make a place worth visiting. Most platforms treat them as inventory. We treat them as the supply chain and the point.
They publish, travelers see
A business publishes an experience with its own dates, prices and terms: what's included, what the deposit is, what cancellation refunds at every deadline. What travelers see is exactly what the business wrote — same terms, same price, nothing repriced in the middle. The business keeps its name and its story on the page.
Plain economics
The price a business sets is the price travelers pay, plus one disclosed traveler service fee (5.5%). We also retain a 10% commission from the business on each booking — both numbers are published up front, and there are no advertising slots and no pay-to-rank. A better experience wins because it's better, not because it paid.
Starting where we can be excellent
At launch we're live in 67 countries, but supply starts small and real: the first journeys you'll see are launch previews prepared under our operator's control while businesses publish their own. Every page shows exactly what exists today — a country with nothing published yet says so plainly.