Hi PH! I'm Haichen, one of the creators of Cluey. @chrismessina - thanks for hunting us. We're a bootstrapped startup from Sydney committing one of the cardinal sins of startups: building a travel product 🤘 We built Cluey because even though taking a vacation is a huge time and financial commitment travel research itself seems to be a combination of reading blogs and 5 year old (locked) forum posts on TripAdvisor. Googling to find yourself a list of destinations which are warm in December, safe for women, with hiking trails, fishing and distilleries? The yield on this is so low I think most of us are trained to not even bother. We've been developing an algorithm which calculates compatibility scores against your individual preferences for over 4,500 destinations. Your preferences can be anything from: * Weather * Activities (94 to choose from but simplified for the chatbot) * Popularity * Cost (coming soon) * Safety (general and female specific) * Language * Flight time * LGBT attitudes * Eco friendliness The chatbot is our way of getting the algorithm out into the world in the quickest way we knew how. It's pretty linear and doesn't do any NLP (reliably anyway) but gets you to a personalised results page with 10 destinations (and any others you want to add for comparison sake). We couldn't find an efficient way in the chatbot to allow users to select from our full range of activities, the NLP was unpredictable. What's next: - We recognise that lots of people already know where they want to go, but want help discovering what to do at the destination. We're working on ways to surface this data. - Fully functioning web app that allows better & faster control over inputs. - Improving performance. The site is quite sluggish atm. Our Lighthouse Report score is damning. Some lessons we've learnt: - Finding free photos from Flickr is hard and can produce some strange results - People love to try and break the chatbot - Training your chatbot is pretty hard - Design is harder than it looks - There's some pretty cool places out there! If you'd like to contact use directly: team@getcluey.com If you're interested in Cluey updates: https://mailchi.mp/ca5d6aa5a6c3/... (or share your email in the Chatbot) PS If you are planning a holiday with specific requirements (esp around activities the chatbot doesnt support) comment below and i can run the model separately for you and send through your results :)

If you'd like to fast forward and see a result: https://www.getcluey.com/en/resu... ✌️

Thanks to everyone who's done it so far. 132 unique locations have been recommended so far. Very diverse Aalborg, Denmark Aarhus, Denmark Alesund, Norway Alta, Norway Amsterdam, Netherlands Antequera, Spain Auckland, New Zealand Auronzo di Cadore, Italy Austin, United States Azores, Portugal Bali, Indonesia Barcelona, Spain Berlin, Germany Bodo, Norway Bolton, England Brisbane, Australia Brunei Darussalam, Asia Buffalo, United States Cairns, Australia Campbell River, Canada Catania, Italy Chicago, United States Chittagong City, Bangladesh Christchurch, New Zealand Clearwater, United States Colon, Argentina Copenhagen, Denmark Corsica, France Debrecen, Hungary Destin, United States Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine Dublin, Ireland Esbjerg, Denmark Florianopolis, Brazil Fuerteventura, Spain Fujinomiya, Japan Gold Coast, Australia Gran Canaria, Spain Hanoi, Vietnam Inuyama, Japan Izmit, Turkey Kelowna, Canada Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia Kouvola, Finland Kuala Terengganu, Malaysia Kuantan, Malaysia Kuching, Malaysia Kumage-gun Yakushima-cho, Japan Kyrenia, Cyprus La Fortuna de San Carlos, Costa Rica Lahti, Finland Langkawi, Malaysia Las Vegas, United States L'Escala, Spain Leuven, Belgium Llanes, Spain Lombok, Indonesia London, England Madeira, Portugal Majorca, Spain Malaga, Spain Maldives, Indian Ocean Manizales, Colombia Maui Island (Hawaii), United States Mauritius, Indian Ocean Mechelen, Belgium Melaka, Malaysia Melbourne, Australia Miami, United States Miri, Malaysia Mishima, Japan Miyoshi, Japan Molde, Norway Montreal, Canada Nakatsugawa, Japan New Orleans, United States New Providence Island, Bahamas New York City, United States Nijmegen, Netherlands Nishio, Japan Oahu Island (Hawaii), United States Okayama, Japan Okazaki, Japan Orlando, United States Oulu, Finland Paris, France Penang Island, Malaysia Perth, Australia Peterborough, Canada Port Stephens, Australia Prague, Czech Republic Puerto Rio Tranquilo, Chile Pulau Perhentian Kecil, Malaysia Pulau Tioman, Malaysia Pyeongchang-gun, South Korea Reunion Island, Indian Ocean Reykjavik, Iceland Rhodes, Greece Saguenay, Canada Saiki, Japan San Antonio, United States San Diego, United States San Francisco, United States San Juan, Argentina San Sebastian - Donostia, Spain Santa Barbara, United States Sarasota, United States Seattle, United States Shoalhaven, Australia Singapore, Asia Stockholm, Sweden Stoke-on-Trent, England Sukabumi, Indonesia Sydney, Australia Syracuse, United States Tamano, Japan Tampa, United States Tel Aviv, Israel Tenerife, Spain The Big Island (Hawaii), United States Thunder Bay, Canada Tochigi, Japan Tokyo, Japan Toledo, United States Uberlandia, Brazil Utrecht, Netherlands Vejle, Denmark Virginia Beach, United States Washington DC, United States Wigan, England Wollongong, Australia Worcester, United States

I agree with previous feedback. The chat experience seemed a bit long, though the results were interesting. I would try to allow the user to focus on what filters are actually important to him and limit the results only by them. Also, maybe it's just me, but the chatbot experience on messenger is a bit slow. I think this is something you can replicate on your site without too much techy hard-work and create great results. Lastly, love the idea - so many times I found myself trying to find vacation ideas by 3-4 factors (usually weather, distance from home, and price of travel tickets) and it takes a lot of work to accomplish that. Good job! Would love to see how this product develops.

Good job guys. Any plans to allow users to query directly in the future? e.g. without the need to do the entire questionnaire if I want to see everywhere that’s warm in October.

How are you sourcing the content to feed your chatbot? My #1 concern would be trustworthiness.

I love it. There are some unique criteria in this chatbot that is very hard to search for. I guess I know where would I travel next.

Will watch it’s development. Maybe onto something...

Pros:

Fun to use

Cons:

Can develop into other fields than travel

Good app, would recommend to friends

Pros:

It provided good recommendations and I would actually go to those places when I decide to go on holidays

Cons:

Try and include past holidays as it could be good reference for future ones and allow a few more categories

Great start! Looking forward to see how you evolve this. I'm sure the more data you can feed in to understand the user the better it will get. It could be great for people like me who are taking short trips with a busy schedule (no time to research), so would love to see some filtering to help find those destinations. Keep it up!

Pros:

Interesting list of destinations, catering to the growing number of travellers wanting a niche holiday

Cons:

More options for the hours to travel would be good. Would take into account peoples budget.

"We are planning to go to Spain in July for 8-9 days. Tell me, please, resorts, hotels (we consider only apartment-hotels) where it would be comfortable with a one-and-a-half-year-old child? We are planning to go for the first time so can you tell how to help the baby to come through the flight easier, what medications are necessary to have, what do you advise to take along with? And we want to rent a car, is it worth doing it at https://bookingautos.com/en or should we use help at the hotel? p.s. maybe someone has a holiday experience with young children in Italy? Maybe it is better to go there?"