Founding City Experts — a handful of seats per city
That part is yours, and it's worth more every month. Vibe of the City is built around it: your recommendations filed by city and travel taste, carried to travellers whose taste genuinely matches yours, standing next to the people who already went. Your channels bring people to you — this is where what you told them keeps working. One seat per taste, per city, and nobody can buy one. Including you.
Free, and it stays free. We read every application by hand and reply either way.
Generated travel content is now free and infinite. That doesn't make yours worth less — it's what makes yours worth more.
A model writes a fluent guide to any city in seconds, then a thousand more before lunch. Volume stopped being the valuable part.
You actually stood there. The scarce half moved from the content to the person — and you're the person.
It has never met you or the traveller, so it can't know whose taste is close to whose.
Fifteen dimensions match a traveller to a city, to another traveller, and to your places. Your tips reach the people they genuinely fit.
It can be everywhere at once and mean nothing anywhere.
You've built an audience that already listens. A seat is where what you told them is still answering someone nine months later.
Six things that exist today, not on a roadmap.
Your name, bio, links and picks on your city's page and on your taste's page — the screens people open while they're planning, all year round. Your posts bring people in; this keeps answering them afterwards.
Fifteen dimensions score a traveller against a city, against another traveller, and against your places — one engine, so the three answers agree. Your tips reach the people they genuinely fit.
“Been” and “want” aren't hearts here — they write through to that traveller's own map. A pick that forty people acted on and stood behind becomes something no amount of generated text can imitate.
Your own numbers: how many distinct people saved a place from each of your lists, plus views on your photos. Proof that someone actually planned around you.
The verified badge, links out to your Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and site, a ready-to-post graphic for your city, and an “as featured on Vibe of the City” badge for your press kit.
Your picks and your reasons render in English, German and Spanish. The German family and the British couple each read their own.
One Founding City Expert per travel taste, per city. Not a directory listing — a seat.
Málaga's food seat. Marbella's beach seat. Seville's culture seat. Eighteen tastes exist in the system; a handful of them define any one city.
If five people hold Málaga's food seat, the seat stops meaning anything — it becomes a ranking, and a traveller can already get a ranking anywhere. The scarcity is what makes it a claim rather than a decoration.
Yours while you're active: picks kept current, and a word when the city page gets something wrong. Never resold, never auctioned to a brand. If you step away, you hear from us before the seat opens.
We're not paying you, and we'd rather argue that out loud than bury it — along with what we will do instead, and what we genuinely haven't worked out yet.
You are never invoiced. Nothing about the seat costs money, in either direction.
A seat is never sold, auctioned or handed to a brand. That is the whole point of it.
No exclusivity, no posting quota, nothing that competes with your own channels. They do a job this one doesn't, and we want them working.
Founding cohort membership is recorded and permanent. The programme will change around you; your founding status won't.
A direct line to the founders and real input on what gets built. You'll know what's shipping before it ships.
When there is value to share, founding seats are the first cohort at the table — and the terms get written with you, before anything goes live.
Because a seat that can be bought is worth nothing to the traveller reading it — and therefore nothing to the person holding it. The moment money can put someone here, every recommendation on the surface carries a question mark, including the ones from people who earned their place. A seat is worth holding precisely because money didn't put anyone in it. So we'd rather build the thing that makes the position pay, with you, than sell you a share of something that doesn't exist yet.
Two minutes: your city, your taste, your channels, and why people trust your tips. Every application is read by a human.
An actual conversation, not a form letter. If the seat is taken or your city isn't live yet, you'll be told that instead of left on a list.
Your profile goes live on your city and taste pages. Put up your picks — each one with your reason for it, in your words.
Tell us when the city page has something wrong. That is worth more to us than a post, and it costs you nothing.
The honest version, so nothing surprises you in month two.
What creators ask on the first call, once they've read the two sections above.
No, and reach isn't what we're selecting on. The question is whether a traveller who shares your taste would act on your pick — the surface matches by taste, not by follower count, so a precise voice with two thousand people beats a broad one with fifty.
There's no posting quota and nothing to produce on a schedule. It's your picks with your reasons, kept current, and a word when the city page gets something wrong — that last part is worth more to us than a post, and it takes a minute.
It's built not to. No exclusivity, nothing to take down elsewhere, no audience to move. Your channels bring people to you; this is where what you told them keeps working in March, when the post is buried.
You'll be told that plainly instead of being left on a list. A city holds several seats — one per taste — so a taken food seat doesn't close the city, and a seat we can't offer you today is a straight answer, not a waiting room.
No. A seat is never sold, auctioned or handed to a brand, and that isn't a policy we could quietly drop later — it's the only reason the seat is worth holding. The moment money can put someone here, every recommendation on the surface carries a question mark, including yours.
We do — for translation, explanations and the ask-a-city lane, and we say so in the list above. The claim was never that models write badly. It's that a model can't be answerable for a recommendation, and being answerable is the part travellers are short of.
About two minutes. We read every application by hand and reply either way — including when the answer is “not this city, not yet”.
