Maybe you live in a popular city for tourism, like New York or San Francisco, and you’re used to giving your list of favorite activities to out-of-town visitors. Or maybe you took the best trip of your life to a distant city, and want to share your tips and tricks with friends. Either way, whether you’re a seasoned local or enthusiastic new visitor, Peek is a new travel site that lets you design your “perfect day” in a city and contribute to a growing travel site where people design their ideal days in cities across the globe. And beginning Tuesday, it will allow normal travelers to join celebrities in making recommendations on the site.
In many ways, Peek is the opposite of the travel guidebooks you might be used to. You won’t find long lists of restaurants, or a comprehensive guide to all kid-friendly activities within a single place. Instead, the site, which launched in October, goes under the assumption that people are overwhelmed with choices when it comes to travel, and they just want to be given a few high-quality options to choose from.
The site is optimized for mobile browsing but has no native apps, an odd choice in an industry that clearly hinges on searching and planning on the go. But Peek, which has the backing of an impressive list of investors including Jack Dorsey, Eric Schmidt, SV Angel and Khosla Ventures, started out with a short list of curated city guides in California and Hawaii, as well as “Perfect Days” designed by celebrities including Piers Morgan (he likes the hot air balloons in San Diego), Tory Burch (she has tips for catching some Hawaiian music in Oahu), and Jack Dorsey (he likes the roasted chicken at San Francisco’s Zuni.) Changes coming to the site on Tuesday will allow anyone to contribute ideas as well.
At first, the ability to create “perfect days” was limited the famous and relatively famous, but Bashir said they had so many requests from people who wanted to post their own “perfect days” that they decided to create a separate version of the site where anyone can post their suggestions for a city. This new version debuts on Tuesday.
“The average person spends an hour planning a trip, and goes to up to 20 different websites,” said founder Ruzwana Bashir, the British CEO and founder of Peek. “In the end, you create a long list of things you want to do and you don’t know where to start.”
The suggestion page looks very much like Pinterest, and users can “re-plan” (like re-pin) suggestions from other people, creating their own “perfect day” as a compilation of other people’s suggestions. Even if you’re not currently planning a trip, it’s fun to browse the suggestions and photos, which can be organized by location around the globe.
 |
 |