2021 Was Better Than 2020. Next Year Will Be Much Better!

Picture by Nick Bolton

At the end of 2020 we predicted 2021 would be a better year for Spotted by Locals for two main reasons
1. We thought the travel industry would slowly start to get out of the pandemic, and people would want to travel more to the destinations we specialize in: those not affected by overtourism
2. We were convinced more travelers and locals would be open to helping local entrepreneurs after they saw how much they suffered during the pandemic.

And it has been a better year. International travel picked up again and so has the number of users of our website (+10%) & downloads of our app (+7%).

We’re nowhere near pre-pandemic levels though. And it’s been another difficult year financially. But, we worked hard on a major project which should secure the future of Spotted by Locals. We hope we can share details of this happy news in a few months!

For our community, it was a good year. After a year of mostly digital meetings in 2020 many more Spotters met up in real life and stayed in our Athens apartment. We welcomed 30 new Spotters from 22 cities to our community in 2021. We published an article about some of the highlights of our 4 Spotters weekends. The last one was 3 years already, and we really hope we can organize one in 2022.

On behalf of all our 492 Spotters in 81 cities,  we thank you for your continued support and we wish you lots of local experiences in 2022! Want to join us as a Spotter in your city? Apply here!