Apply HN: Wanderlust – Travel recommendations based on your budget and interests

[I'm a huge fan of spontaneous travel and have some side projects in travel destination/activity discovery myself. Happy to chat more via email.]

If you cannot monetize from Day-1, then it's going to be very difficult unless you repivot and change your biz-model; and also, ofcourse if you are not too keen on monetizing itself.

Hotels will not list unless there are network effects. Already there are tonnes of listing services. An average hotel in South East Asia lists in Agoda, TripAdvisor, Booking.com and many more!!

I would recommend this : take a few months off and travel across South East Asia(or atleast Thailand & Vietnam - as they are well connected to Internet) and hear the challenges faced by hotels and guesthouses. You will be surprised to hear what they say. Remember that whole of the Western World descends down in this region to escape winter.

(Call me short-sighted, but making money from Ads is not 'monetization' as per me)

My purpose was to drill into what phrases like "not having a destination in mind", "new experience", and "not caring" mean and expose the assumptions about human behavior under pinning them.

It's a thought experiment. The scenario is simple and concrete and reduces the likelihood of wishful thinking about human behavior. By lowering the risk/reward ration, it is easier to see the economic model.

The first question then becomes, why would Ubering to random restaurants work or not work?

And the second question is, how is the market Wanderlust wants to tackle similar to and different from the Ubering to random restaurant market?

A third question, if Ubering to random restaurants is a viable market, given the greater economic activity and higher recurrence of restaurant dining, would it be a more scalable model, and if it isn't what makes Wanderlust's market more scalable?