City guides for travelers customized with tips from local ‘soulmates’

Nectar & Pulse is a new Austrian firm that creates personal city guides by helping travelers zero in on the suggestions of locals with similar preferences.

There may be endless travel reviews and recommendations available on the web today, but they’re often not worth a hill of beans, as the saying goes, if those reading and writing them don’t share some basic tastes and values. Enter Nectar & Pulse, a new Austrian firm that creates personal city guides by helping travelers zero in on the tips and suggestions of locals with similar personalities and preferences. Visitors to the Nectar & Pulse site begin by indicating what city they’re interested in visiting; currently, the company focuses on Stockholm, Vienna and London. From there, they can browse an assortment of what the site calls “soulmates” — carefully selected locals in the city who have insider tips to share. Rather than just including all such tips in each guide, however, Nectar & Pulse encourages consumers to peruse soulmates’ interview profiles to get a sense of which are more or less compatible with their own sensibilities. When they find someone with similar tastes and preferences, consumers can add that person to their “suitcase,” and his or her suggestions will be incorporated in their travel guide. A basic guide “collector” binder is priced at EUR 10, while soulmate tip selections cost EUR 6 each. As an example, the video below illustrates Nectar & Pulse’s Vienna guide in more detail: As it continues to connect travelers with their urban twinsumers around the globe, Nectar & Pulse seeks new soulmates for its roster as well as sales partners on the business end. One to partner with or emulate in your neck of the woods? Spotted by: Regina Fischer