ABOUT

WHERE IT STARTED

Long before The World Locals had a name, I made my first travel guide.

It was a school assignment about St Lucia. I’d never actually been there, but I researched the island and put together my own guide, complete with what to pack, things to see and even a section called A Sense of St Lucia about what made the destination distinctive.

I obviously had no idea it would mean anything years later, but looking back, there was already something familiar in the idea: understand a place, work out what matters and turn that information into something useful for somebody else.

Travel itself had also been a huge part of my life from a young age, from family road trips to my first adventures with friends. I was fortunate to have those experiences growing up, and they gave me an early curiosity about the world beyond what I knew. I became fascinated by new cultures, different ways of living and the feeling of exploring somewhere completely unfamiliar.

When I got to university, I decided to enrol in the ERASMUS study abroad programme and spent six months living in Lisbon.

It was completely life-changing. At first, it was incredibly daunting, but it pushed me well outside my comfort zone and opened me up to experiences I probably never would have had otherwise. More than anything, it showed me how much growth can come from taking a chance on something unfamiliar. From that point on, I knew I wanted to see as much of the world as possible and hopefully encourage others to do the same.

Towards the end of those six months, I found myself constantly being asked for recommendations. Friends asked. Then family. Then friends of friends and friends of family. Everyone wanted to know where to eat, where to drink, which viewpoints to visit and what was actually worth doing in Lisbon.

So, in summer 2016, I put together what now feels like the first real precursor to The World Locals. It was nothing more than a few pages in Microsoft Word filled with my favourite viewpoints, bars, restaurants, cafés and things to do, from hidden speakeasies to urban exploration.

Unlike that childhood St Lucia assignment, this guide came from somewhere I had actually lived. They were places I knew, experiences I’d had and recommendations I genuinely wanted other people to enjoy.

I didn’t think much of it at the time. I simply wanted to help people find the places I’d come to love and make their own time in the city a little easier.

That same summer, I went backpacking through Thailand and Cambodia with friends, armed with a trusty Rough Guide. Travelling around Europe had always felt relatively familiar, but Southeast Asia felt like a completely different beast.

It made me realise just how valuable good information can be when you’re somewhere unfamiliar. Somewhere along the way, I stopped simply travelling with guidebooks and started becoming fascinated by them.

THE BIRTH OF THE WORLD LOCALS

After graduating, I spent the next few years working in Central London. I started at a media company, where I learnt more about blogging, digital publishing and how websites were built, before moving into the events industry.

That role took me across Europe and the Middle East, giving me the chance to meet some incredible people and experience places I probably wouldn’t have reached otherwise. Looking back, both jobs gave me skills and experiences that would eventually become surprisingly useful when I started building something of my own.

A few years later, I found myself missing travel and craving a new adventure. I wanted to step into the unknown again, experience somewhere completely different and push myself outside the routine I’d settled into.

So I decided to move to Sydney for a year.

The journey there took me through Hong Kong and Tokyo before I eventually landed in Australia and started working at a digital agency. Sydney quickly became somewhere I loved living, but the experience also made me notice something.

There was plenty of information online about Australia, yet I often struggled to find the kind of clear, useful guidance I actually wanted, particularly for people moving there, settling into the city or trying to understand Sydney beyond the obvious visitor highlights.

When I returned to the UK, that idea stayed with me.

I kept thinking about the questions I’d had when I first arrived: where should you live, which neighbourhoods are worth exploring, where do people actually spend their time, what should you prioritise and how do you make a huge city feel easier to understand?

That idea eventually became The World Locals.

The first website was scrappy, to say the least, and it took me almost a year to get it up and running. But I was fortunate to build a brilliant group of Sydney-based writers around it, each bringing their own knowledge of the city and helping turn the idea into something much bigger than I could have created alone.

For its first year, The World Locals focused entirely on Sydney, sharing the places, neighbourhoods and experiences that helped people understand the city beyond the usual visitor checklist.

TAKING THE WORLD LOCALS GLOBAL

After a year focused entirely on Sydney, I started to see that The World Locals could become something much bigger.

I loved what we had built, but I didn’t want the idea to stop at one city. Travel had always been the reason I started it, and the site needed to reflect more of the world I was still so eager to explore.

By 2022, I was fortunate enough to be working remotely, which gave me the freedom to travel in a completely different way.

Over the course of the year, I spent three months living and working in Spain, two months in Turkey and another two months in South Africa, returning to the UK in between. Rather than simply visiting somewhere for a few days, I had the chance to slow down, settle into places and experience more of the everyday details that make a destination feel different.

Travel has since taken me through more than 40 countries, from short city breaks and backpacking trips to longer periods living and working overseas.

Those experiences have shaped how I think about travel content. A useful guide shouldn’t simply tell you which attractions exist. It should help you understand how a place fits together, what deserves your time, who different experiences suit and what you might otherwise miss.

Along the way, my bag also seemed to get heavier with every guidebook I picked up.

Some were brilliant and became things I genuinely relied on. Others left me wanting much more. The more I travelled, the more I found myself looking for the same thing: clear, useful information that could help me understand a place, find the experiences worth my time and feel more confident stepping somewhere unfamiliar.

It became clear that The World Locals shouldn’t stop at Sydney.

I wanted to take the idea global and create the kind of travel resource I was constantly searching for myself: somewhere people could discover new destinations, get useful recommendations, understand more about the places they were visiting and feel encouraged to step beyond what they already knew.

That meant stepping back from what we had built and asking a bigger question:

What did I actually want The World Locals to become?

THE NEXT CHAPTER

That question led to a period of stepping back, redesigning, replanning and really thinking about why I was building The World Locals in the first place.

Rather than simply creating more travel content, I wanted to build something genuinely valuable for the way people travel today: somewhere that could inspire you to discover a new place, help you understand it and give you the information and confidence to experience it properly.

In 2025, The World Locals relaunched with a clearer direction and a simple idea at its heart: Inspire Discovery.

Since then, that idea has grown into a wider mission:

Inspire discovery. Deepen understanding. Make travel easier. Celebrate the world.

Today, The World Locals is growing into the travel publication I had been searching for through all those years of travelling: modern guides, first-hand insight, considered recommendations and carefully researched advice that help people decide where to go, what’s worth their time and what makes a place meaningful.

The aim isn’t to tell you how to travel or give you another endless checklist.

It’s to give you good information, useful context and enough guidance to make better decisions, while leaving plenty of room to go out and discover things for yourself.

HOW WE WORK

The World Locals combines first-hand travel experience with careful, current research.

Where I’ve personally stayed somewhere, eaten at a restaurant, explored a neighbourhood or tried an experience, I’ll say so and share what I actually learned from it. Where a recommendation is based on research rather than personal experience, it stays that way. We don’t pretend to have experienced something we haven’t.

Every guide is built around usefulness.

That means checking recommendations and practical information, looking beyond the obvious choices, explaining why somewhere might be worth your time and being clear about who different places or experiences are actually right for.

Whenever possible, I want The World Locals to help answer the questions that simple lists often miss:

What does this area actually feel like?
Who is it best for?
What’s the trade-off?
What would I prioritise?
What should you notice while you’re there?

First-hand experience adds another layer. Sometimes the most useful advice comes from something small: discovering that two places are much further apart than they look on a map, realising an attraction is better visited later in the day, finding that a neighbourhood changes completely after dark or simply knowing what I’d do differently next time.

The World Locals may also use affiliate links and work with travel brands, hotels, tourism organisations and other partners as the business grows. Those relationships help support what we do, but they don’t determine what earns a recommendation. Any hosted or sponsored experiences will be clearly disclosed.

Reader trust comes first.

STILL THE SAME IDEA

For all the changes over the years, the idea behind The World Locals hasn’t changed very much.

It was there in that childhood St Lucia assignment, in a very different form. It was there again when I started handing out Lisbon recommendations from a Microsoft Word document. And it was there when I first wondered whether Sydney could be made easier to understand for somebody arriving there for the first time.

The goal is still to take curiosity, experience and useful information and turn them into something that helps somebody else discover a place and get more from being there.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you.

It’s a genuine pleasure to have you here, and I hope The World Locals helps you discover somewhere new, understand a little more of the world around you and make your next trip better.

Welcome to The World Locals.