Brainstorm
Planning a trip usually means a dozen open tabs — flight search, visa requirement pages, “best time to visit” listicles, a spreadsheet to hold it all together. NearMiles started from the observation that the actual bottleneck isn’t information, it’s synthesis: travelers don’t lack data, they lack someone to turn “somewhere warm, under $800, no visa hassle” into three real options with real prices attached.
Discovery
The persona split — Thrill Seekers, Family Hub, Chill Mode, Foodie Paradise — came out of a simple question: “search by destination” assumes you already know where you’re going, but a lot of travel demand starts from a vibe, not a place. Building discovery around travel style instead of geography meant the search bar could stay a single field (“Where do you want to go? Paris, Bali, Tokyo…”) with a “Surprise me” fallback for people with even less of a plan than that.
Design
Visa status, live flight pricing, and AI itinerary generation are positioned as one flow rather than three features, because that’s the actual sequence a traveler goes through — and normally the point where they give up and open more tabs. The three-step “Search → See visa + prices instantly → Generate your AI itinerary” band on the homepage is a literal description of the product, not marketing copy. A weekly “Monday Travel Drop” email exists to bring people back between trips, since travel intent is bursty and most visitors won’t convert on their first session.
Build
The itinerary engine builds a personalised day-by-day plan with local tips, cost estimates, and must-see stops from a destination and a small set of preferences, rather than returning a generic city guide. Visa status is checked against 180+ countries and flight prices are pulled live rather than shown as cached estimates — both called out explicitly in the trust row under the hero, since “estimates” is exactly what this product was built to avoid.
Delivery
Shipped with a working search-to-itinerary flow, editor-curated destination picks for cold-start users, and an email capture for retention.