Travel discoverySpin to itinerary
Built from scratch
Earth Roulette
I built a button that sends you somewhere unexpected, then added enough real travel data to make the result useful rather than merely random.
- 01Set the boundaries
- 02Spin the globe
- 03Inspect the surprise
- 04Plan the trip
The problem is too much choice
Travel sites are very good at selling you a hotel after you already know where you are going. They are less useful when the entire problem is: where the hell should I go?
Earth Roulette starts there. Push the button and it gives you a place you might never have searched for yourself. The randomness is not a gimmick bolted onto a booking engine. It is the point.
Chaos, with boundaries
Pure randomness can send a broke beach person to an expensive ski resort, which is funny once. So I added filters for continents, countries, budgets, and activities. You can ask for somewhere warm, cheap, good for hiking, kid-friendly, romantic, accessible, or just far away from whatever weather you are currently complaining about.
There are more than 5,000 destinations in the database. Each one has enough context to decide whether the surprise is actually interesting: sights, food, weather, history, practical travel information, and the best time to go.
Save the good results to a bucket list, share them with somebody who needs convincing, check flights, or hand the destination to Travel Bot and turn it into a day-by-day itinerary.
The small idea that kept growing
It began as one random button because I thought choosing a destination should be more fun. Then came the filters, destination database, travel guides, flight search, accounts, saved places, multiple languages, and mobile apps.
I built the whole thing from scratch and still enjoy the basic interaction more than I probably should. Spin, land somewhere unfamiliar, and spend the next ten minutes seriously considering a trip that did not exist in your head a moment ago.