THE FIRST GUIDE

Travel had already been a huge part of my life, 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 was hooked on travel from a young age, 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 inspire 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 I now think of as the unofficial first The World Locals guide. It was nothing more than a few pages in Microsoft Word with my favourite viewpoints, bars, restaurants, cafés and things to do, from hidden speakeasies to urban exploration. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I just 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, and 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 out 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 locals 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 the 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 living and working in Turkey, and two months living and working 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.

Along the way, my bag 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: to encourage people to explore new places and cultures, deepen their understanding of the destinations they visit, make travel easier through clear guidance, and celebrate more of the world we share. Above all, I want The World Locals to encourage more people to discover the world for themselves.

Today, The World Locals is growing into the travel publication I had been searching for through all those years of travelling: modern guides, considered recommendations and inspiration 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 inspiration to go out and discover things for yourself.

And in many ways, the goal is still the same as it was when I put together that first little Lisbon guide in Microsoft Word: help someone discover somewhere new and make their own experience of it a little better.

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, step outside your comfort zone and get a little more from the world around you.

Welcome to The World Locals.