Spotted by Locals travel guide 12+

South Seattle Doesn’t Exist

Imagine my disappointment, $3.99 for an App that reviews less than half of Seattle. If it’s South of I-90, there’s virtually no reviews. Undoubtedly the Northern half is the easy pickings for reviewers, but what about the rest of the city? There’s all sorts of great & quirky places around Seatac, Georgetown and Black Diamond, to name a few. Nearby small towns like Enumclaw-a mini Telluride- go completely ignored.
It’s lazy reporting, and it’s dishonest to charge for an App that is only focused on one small part of the city. There’s a lot more to Seattle than what’s in Spotted By.

Developer Response ,

Dear Ted, you're absolutely right and we're sorry about this. Our locals write about their favorite spots, and probably most of them are located in the North. 2 new Spotters in Seattle just started - we will make sure they will cover South Seattle too. Georgetown could use more tips for sure! Our Spotters only write about the *city of Seattle*, so Seatac, Black Diamond and the other towns and cities you mentioned that are not in Seattle will never be included.

Thanks for your comment. Bart - Co-founder Spottted by Locals

Money well spent!

For less than the cost of one beer (if you know a fun spot with good beer for less than $3.99, let me know...or buy a city in this app and you will find one) you are guaranteed to find at least one good tip in a city you are going to spend time in. Like most everyone, I enjoy travel and feel that part of the enjoyment of travel is the planning and anticipation. I am always on the lookout for articles about cities I will be visiting. So far I have purchased 5 cities (NYC, DC, Paris, Florence, & Stockholm) and at a minimum have found at least one Spotted recommendation in each of the cities that I wasn't aware of and made my visit better. It is like having an in the know, cool, virtual friend in your pocket. Updates for each city are pushed out frequently. So frequently that it is my only suggestion. I wish the option to update was more in the background instead of having an alert right away after opening the app. But, it is a minor thing. The takeaway, $3.99 per city is money well spent and it will pay dividends when you travel. Plus, it is fun to use prior to your trip, dreaming and planning.

Developer Response ,

Dear Craig, what a super nice review. It is really very helpful for us to get a good review of our app and motivating to read this to continue what we love doing. It makes our day :)

Perfect way to explore a city

I first heard about SpottedbyLocals when I was studying abroad in Paris in 2009. I usually like to collect recommendations from friends before visiting a new city but in this day and age with social media, people end up seeing certain places on Instagram and Facebook and then just go where they see their friends go. This works sometimes but the problem is that you end up being directed to the same place that all the other people are going to which in effect ends up being touristy. If you’re like me and want to explore a city as someone who lives there would, then this is the app for you. The app itself is nothing special. Basic map with some highlighted spots but the content and curation is what is so key. We went to at least 10 of the recommended places in Mexico City and they were all spot on. You can’t get fair assessments of where to go on sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor anymore because their ranking systems have become biased towards the places that pay them. SpottedByLocals is a neutral assessment of amazing places in cities by the people who are proudest to live in them.