Booked & Beyond began with a spreadsheet. Friends kept asking the same questions — which hotel in Lisbon, which day trip in Bali, where to eat in Bangkok that is not a tourist trap — and answering them properly meant the same tedious work every time: pull the candidates, read the recent reviews rather than the averages, check what the rate actually includes, and look at where the place is on a map.
That spreadsheet is still the product. It just got much bigger, and it got published. What we sell readers is the hours of comparison they would otherwise spend themselves.
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