So many start-ups fail but by keeping it simple and sharing with Google, Spotted by Locals has built a viable business and ‘fantastic way of life’. Pamela Whitby hears more

Fed up with out-of-date travel guides, and having to spend hours finding useful travel content online, Bart van Poll and his wife Sanne co-founded Spotted by Locals back in 2007. The idea was simple:

·       Find passionate city bloggers or ‘spotters’ (a maximum of six in each city) with great insider tips,

·       Sign them to a contract that keeps content independent, authentic and up-to-date,

·       Publish the information on a website

Today, the company has spotters in 56 cities, 47 of which are in Europe, its content is used in Volkswagen navigation systems, over 150,000 people have downloaded the iPhone app and Android usage is growing.

Spotted by Locals remains a small team but this has given it the agility to respond quickly in a rapidly changing market. “When we launched in 2007, we thought our business model would be to sell ad space on the website, and then get rich sleeping,” says van Poll, who admits that this never materialised. At the time, however, Apple had just launched the iPhone and before long, the new start-up had realised that the focus had to be mobile. They were, of course, right.

“Increasingly we are finding that people come to our site via mobile,” says van Poll, “and they are also using the device to navigate in that city.” To date, the iPhone app has been the primary focus but this is expected to shift with the arrival of new apps for Android in the next two weeks. Investing in app development is a major part of Spotted by Local’s strategy, and a “considerable part of the budget” but van Poll says they quickly see a return on investment.

Why content really does count

Today, Spotted by Locals drives revenues by selling apps to consumers and by licensing content to third parties. For example, when Volkswagen launched Up, a small city car last year, it drew on Spotted by Locals’ content for a lifestyle campaign which encouraged drivers to upload their favourite spots to a dedicated website, coined smallgreatplaces.com. While this is no longer online, Volkswagen continues to use Spotted by Locals’ content in its navigation systems.

For van Poll the firm’s success to date is not the result of search engine optimisation or by blindly following trends. Instead, it’s all about the quality of the content. “We think that by creating great content, users will find us via Google and Google increasingly proves that we are right,” he says. “Google is starting to get more intelligent about what good content is and that benefits us.”

So what makes great content? Here is the Spotted by Locals’ formula:

1.      Be current: The content on Spotted by Locals is up-to-date and written by local people who speak the local language and live in the city they write about. ‘Spotters’ are contracted to check their content every other month to ensure it remains current.

2.      Do what you do well: The site may “not have the most beautiful pictures,” says van Poll but it does “have the best insider tips”. The website is edited by a native English speaker to ensure the content is of a high quality.

3.      Get the technical stuff right: Spotted by Locals uses Wordpress but then tweaks to ensure everything is right. It outsources things like app development.

4.      Tell Google everything: From the exact location of the spots (the address) to geographical information like longitude and latitude and who the author is. “We strongly encourage Spotters to connect in Google Plus so that Google knows there is a real person behind the content,” says van Poll.

5.      Create genuine authentic content: Robotic writing won’t work.

6.      Separate commerce from content: Bloggers don’t get any freebies or kickbacks from reviewing a spot.

7.      Use social media: van Poll is a firm believer that this helps you stay close to users.

8.      Keep it simple

EyeforTravel take: What Spotted by Locals has done is find a niche that its user base (usually fairly affluent, second time city visitors travelling without children) find truly useful.  While TripAdvisor is great for hotel recommendations, for smaller spots gigs and venues, it’s sometimes hard to find a reliable recommendation. When you’re in a city for a second time, you also want something ‘different’.  Going forward, it could drive additional revenues from bookings made via the site, which van Poll says they’ve been thinking about.

So is it ripe for acquisition? “We want to publish on as many channels as possible around the world. Ours is a fantastic way of life. We travel around the world, meet super positive people who are passionate about their cities. I can’t think of anything we’d rather be doing,” says van Poll.

Enough said.

Next week we take a look at Tripoto, another self-funded start up on a mission to crowdsource user generated travel content.