Spotted by Locals City Guides

Name: Spotted by Locals City Guides
Rating: 3.7 (105 reviews)
Author: Spotted B.V.

Explore 85+ Cities as a Local!

Only for iPhone

Free · In‑App Purchases

105 Ratings
Ages

13+
Years
Category

Travel
Developer

Spotted B.V.
Language

EN
English
Size

64
MB

iPhone

Discover cities through the eyes of locals. Skip the tourist traps and explore authentic spots recommended by people who actually live there. > Insider tips and hidden gems, handpicked by locals > Support sustainable, community-driven tourism > Find authentic cafés, bars, art, and culture beyond the guidebooks > Travel responsibly, support local culture, and make every trip more meaningful. Don’t just visit a city, live it. Download Spotted by Locals today.

Ratings & Reviews

3.7

out of 5

105 Ratings

Good idea — but not easy for me to use
09/02/2019

SteveinMN
Updated:I received a nice, helpful email from one of the developers after my review, which urged me to take another look at the app. I also had an opportunity to visit another city covered by the app. My impressions on another look: The free version on the App Store gives you only a taste of how the app works. To get a real idea if it will work for you, you need to gamble the cost of buying it. Without purchase the downloaded version isn’t very useful. It becomes far more useful when you can read entire entries, filter more, and map locations. So I will bump my original review by a star. I hesitate to award the app a full five stars at this time because I still think it’s important to know more about the “spotters” and their qualifications. The vast majority of the spots listed in the city I just visited were written by just two spotters. Either by accident or design, there was absolutely no overlap in their recommendations. Maybe that will change as more spotters come on board though with the developers’ intention to meet each spotter personally and given that the app has been available for years, that does not seem likely to me. No offense to the spotters who have labored to provide content for this app, but It still is not clear to me from the spotter bios that they know their coffee or old-school local music or whatever. I like the concept of the app. I know people who devote themselves slavishly to the big crowdsourced apps that start with T and Y and the places recommended here are too small to rank on apps like those. All good. I’m looking forward to future versions of this app.

Developer Response
Thanks for your feedback Steve! 1. You CAN filter by activities! Just click on the filter on top of each page. 2. You CAN check which spots are near to you and even how far away they are (every spot shows distance). There's also a map view - just click the globe! 3. Not everyone agrees but we think it's important to keep it simple and only show our Spotters' opinion. We want to treat all spots equally. A small spot far away very few people have visited (and hence "liked") could be just as cool or perhaps even cooler in our opinion :) We'd love it if you can check out points 1 & 2 and perhaps update your review if you agree you may have missed these? Reviews are extremely important for us as we have no advertising budget... Thanks, Bart van Poll - Co-founder Spotted by Locals
Good idea — but not easy for me to use
09/02/2019

SteveinMN

Updated:I received a nice, helpful email from one of the developers after my review, which urged me to take another look at the app. I also had an opportunity to visit another city covered by the app. My impressions on another look: The free version on the App Store gives you only a taste of how the app works. To get a real idea if it will work for you, you need to gamble the cost of buying it. Without purchase the downloaded version isn’t very useful. It becomes far more useful when you can read entire entries, filter more, and map locations. So I will bump my original review by a star. I hesitate to award the app a full five stars at this time because I still think it’s important to know more about the “spotters” and their qualifications. The vast majority of the spots listed in the city I just visited were written by just two spotters. Either by accident or design, there was absolutely no overlap in their recommendations. Maybe that will change as more spotters come on board though with the developers’ intention to meet each spotter personally and given that the app has been available for years, that does not seem likely to me. No offense to the spotters who have labored to provide content for this app, but It still is not clear to me from the spotter bios that they know their coffee or old-school local music or whatever. I like the concept of the app. I know people who devote themselves slavishly to the big crowdsourced apps that start with T and Y and the places recommended here are too small to rank on apps like those. All good. I’m looking forward to future versions of this app.
Developer Response 06/23/2019
Thanks for your feedback Steve! 1. You CAN filter by activities! Just click on the filter on top of each page. 2. You CAN check which spots are near to you and even how far away they are (every spot shows distance). There's also a map view - just click the globe! 3. Not everyone agrees but we think it's important to keep it simple and only show our Spotters' opinion. We want to treat all spots equally. A small spot far away very few people have visited (and hence "liked") could be just as cool or perhaps even cooler in our opinion :) We'd love it if you can check out points 1 & 2 and perhaps update your review if you agree you may have missed these? Reviews are extremely important for us as we have no advertising budget... Thanks, Bart van Poll - Co-founder Spotted by Locals
Perfect way to explore a city
02/21/2018

L-tone
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.
Perfect way to explore a city
02/21/2018

L-tone

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.
South Seattle Doesn’t Exist
07/01/2018

Call Me Ted
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
South Seattle Doesn’t Exist
07/01/2018

Call Me Ted

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 07/04/2018
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
*UPDATED* annoyed
05/01/2018

Roroirene
I wrote a review about a month ago about this app and how it didn’t work while I was on vacation. Their response team sent me back an email with a handful of excuses how it was my fault because I downloaded it wrong and asked if I would remove my review. I asked for a refund and he told me the only way I could get a refund was if I had PayPal. I received a total of SIX EMAILS from this guy asking me to remove my review. Not once did he take ownership for the app not working or gave me any other resolution other than to re-download it again (pay for it) and hope it works on my next vacation. He continually blamed me for downloading it incorrectly. By the last email this morning, it felt like harassment and I am so annoyed with this guy I could scream. Don’t download this app unless you are fully confident in your skills to DOWNLOAD AN APP or have the extreme patience and extra time to deal write emails back and forth for over a month about a $4 product and a bad review.

Developer Response
We do not understand why this customer is so angry. It truly saddens us we have not been able to reach our goal to make an unhappy customer into a happy one! The customer asked for a refund and wrote they would "consider removing my review after I received a refund". We recommended trying re-installing the app - in 99.6% of the cases the issue such as described by our customer is a connection issue, resolved by a reinstallation. The App Store does not offer us (or any publisher) the option to refund directly, so we refunded via Paypal. We asked her to try our resolution (re-install) and offered free access to customer's next city trip, to which customer did not respond. We have still not heard if the resolution was successful - we think it would have been. We also asked them in a nice way if they would consider removing their review as mentioned in customer's email. Obviously, we triggered something that made our customer very angry, which we still don't understand. We are truly sorry about this - it's the last thing we wanted. What we realise in hindsight is that sending 3 emails after a customer has not replied is too much even though our only goal was to help and check if the issue was resolved and if our email has not ended up in a spam folder or so. We apologized a few times in our emails, before receiving this final angry review. We still hope our customer can forgive us for this, and we hope for a permanent peace agreement and all the very best in life for our customer! Bart van Poll - Co-founder Spotted by Locals
*UPDATED* annoyed
05/01/2018

Roroirene

I wrote a review about a month ago about this app and how it didn’t work while I was on vacation. Their response team sent me back an email with a handful of excuses how it was my fault because I downloaded it wrong and asked if I would remove my review. I asked for a refund and he told me the only way I could get a refund was if I had PayPal. I received a total of SIX EMAILS from this guy asking me to remove my review. Not once did he take ownership for the app not working or gave me any other resolution other than to re-download it again (pay for it) and hope it works on my next vacation. He continually blamed me for downloading it incorrectly. By the last email this morning, it felt like harassment and I am so annoyed with this guy I could scream. Don’t download this app unless you are fully confident in your skills to DOWNLOAD AN APP or have the extreme patience and extra time to deal write emails back and forth for over a month about a $4 product and a bad review.
Developer Response 05/02/2018
We do not understand why this customer is so angry. It truly saddens us we have not been able to reach our goal to make an unhappy customer into a happy one! The customer asked for a refund and wrote they would "consider removing my review after I received a refund". We recommended trying re-installing the app - in 99.6% of the cases the issue such as described by our customer is a connection issue, resolved by a reinstallation. The App Store does not offer us (or any publisher) the option to refund directly, so we refunded via Paypal. We asked her to try our resolution (re-install) and offered free access to customer's next city trip, to which customer did not respond. We have still not heard if the resolution was successful - we think it would have been. We also asked them in a nice way if they would consider removing their review as mentioned in customer's email. Obviously, we triggered something that made our customer very angry, which we still don't understand. We are truly sorry about this - it's the last thing we wanted. What we realise in hindsight is that sending 3 emails after a customer has not replied is too much even though our only goal was to help and check if the issue was resolved and if our email has not ended up in a spam folder or so. We apologized a few times in our emails, before receiving this final angry review. We still hope our customer can forgive us for this, and we hope for a permanent peace agreement and all the very best in life for our customer! Bart van Poll - Co-founder Spotted by Locals

Spring has sprung, and we're celebrating with a gift: the Lublin guide is now free for everyone. Cobblestone streets, hidden courtyards, the best pierogi you'll ever eat. One of Poland's most underrated cities, seen through local eyes. Go wander.

Version 7.0.33513 Mar 19

Subscriptions

Lublin City Guide by Locals

Discover Lublin like a local!

$9.99
Valencia city guide by locals

Discover Valencia like a local!

$8.99
Yearly Membership

Full acces to all city guides!

Trial
Travel Pack

Full acces to all city guides!

$14.99
Paris city guide by locals

Discover Paris like a local!

$9.99
London city guide by locals

Discover London like a local!

$9.99
Berlin city guide by locals

Discover Berlin like a local!

$9.99
Rome city guide by locals

Discover Rome like a local!

$9.99
Porto city guide by locals

Discover Porto like a local!

$9.99

Data Used to Track You

The following data may be used to track you across apps and websites owned by other companies:
- Usage Data
Data Not Linked to You

The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:
- Usage Data
- Diagnostics

Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More

Accessibility

Information

Seller: Spotted B.V.
Size: 64 MB
Category: Travel
Compatibility: Requires iOS 15.0 or later.

iPhone
Requires iOS 15.0 or later.

iPod touch
Requires iOS 15.0 or later.
Languages: English
Age Rating: 13+

13+

Learn More

Infrequent
Alcohol, Tobacco, Drug Use or References
In-App Purchases: Yes

Barcelona travel guide $3.99

Monthly Membership $4.99

Yearly Membership $29.99

Istanbul travel guide $3.99

Philadelphia guide by locals $3.99

Travel Pack $14.99

Mexico City local guide $9.99

Barcelona city guide by locals $9.99

Rome city guide by locals $9.99

Paris city guide by locals $9.99

Learn More

Developer Website

Privacy Policy

Supports

Family Sharing

Some in-app purchases and subscriptions may be shareable with your family group when Family Sharing is enabled. Learn More

You Might Also Like

Culture Trip: Travel & Explore

The Essential Travel Companion
Sitata Travel Safe

Travel
Withlocals: Private Tours

Local guides & experiences
Barcelona Travel Guide -

Barcelona Travel City Guide
Barcelona Travel Guide & AI

Trip Planner and AI Assistant
Eatwith - Food experiences

Social dining with locals
WhatsHere Find Places Nearby

Tourist attractions near you
Showaround - Find a Local

Travel
Copenhagen Travel Guide

with Offline City & Metro Map
Paris Travel Guide .

Travel Guide, City & Metro Map

Spotted by Locals City Guides

Ratings & Reviews

Good idea — but not easy for me to use

Perfect way to explore a city

South Seattle Doesn’t Exist

UPDATED annoyed

What’s New

Subscriptions

Lublin City Guide by Locals

Valencia city guide by locals

Yearly Membership

Travel Pack

Paris city guide by locals

London city guide by locals

Berlin city guide by locals

Rome city guide by locals

Porto city guide by locals

App Privacy

Data Used to Track You

Data Not Linked to You

Accessibility

Information

Supports

Family Sharing

You Might Also Like

Culture Trip: Travel & Explore

Sitata Travel Safe

Withlocals: Private Tours

Barcelona Travel Guide -

Barcelona Travel Guide & AI

Eatwith - Food experiences

WhatsHere Find Places Nearby

Showaround - Find a Local

Copenhagen Travel Guide

Paris Travel Guide .