Starting a new website to list things to do / places to go with children

[dadeng]

Hi, I'm thinking to start a new site to list things to do with children, I struggle a lot finding new things to do with mine (outside touristy stuff) and I thought this might be a common struggle for other parents.

My question is if you as parents would use it to look around for places domestically or only for times when visiting new cities and if people would be happy to contribute to a site like this with their own recommendations.

Thanks!

My go to is https://www.dayoutwiththekids.co.uk/
What will make your website any different?

You would be competing with Trip Advisor which is quite a big ask.

There’s lots of bloggers who do
this for free- look at Bablands or Museum Mum.

Lots of similar long-standing websites in the niche with this type of content.

How are parents going to find your site to collaborate? Unless you are prepared to make a substantial investment in SEO, you will struggle to rank on the major search engines.

Not wanting to sound negative OP, you may well have a lot of experience in web dev, and you will need it, or the means to buy it in.

It’s hard it is to get on first page of Google, for example. A nice looking site is not enough, unless you can rank, you will struggle to monetise the offering.

Good luck if you decide to go for it, I hope it works out well for you.

When you google 'things to do,with children' the first hits are big websites.

daysoutwiththekids

Kidsdaysout

tripadvisor

letsgowiththechildren

It would be lovely to have a resource that paid more than lip service to children with disabilities, I really struggle to find out how accessible lots of places are to a toddler who is blind and is a wheelchair user.

When I moved to a new area, I was looking at stuff to do on Saturdays and found websites like days out woth kids was only for 'big stuff'. Not the local farm park or soft play.

When I'm on holiday I go for trip advisor for lots of info on what it is actually like. Also, I've found it great for all those little touristy places like smaller museums

Thanks everyone for the answers, very useful.
Those that point out the big competitors, TripAdvisor, DOWTK, etc you're absolutely right. But for the weekend/daily stuff I still haven't found these super useful, also neither of those will list events in semi-real time (small theatre plays, markets, popup events, etc) or allow filtering for things I consider important: accessibility for buggies/wheelchairs, any particular dietary requirements, etc.

Research continues ;)

But for the weekend/daily stuff I still haven't found these super useful, also neither of those will list events in semi-real time (small theatre plays, markets, popup events, etc

Probably because this would be almost impossible to keep up with. It would have to rely on the people putting on these events to put them on your website. And enough off them to make sure that one user would have a couple of things to choose from to make it worth their while coming to the website for information.

A small theatre or a market will advertise in its own local area with posters and on social media rather than on a national website.

If you have the skillset and the inclination why not.

You have the cost of domain registration then the web hosting platform.

It will take a lot to keep it relevant and up to date.

You'll have to promote very heavily on local fb groups etc so need full social media strategy so brush up on Canva and create a "brand palette"

Are you doing this all for free?

If you want to focus locally, would fb or nextdoor work?

As this is posted in business OP, how will you make money out of it (not being snarky just don’t know how websites like this work - would you sell advertising space?)

We have a local one called 'North East Family Fun' and its very popular.
I use it for new ideas as my LO is getting older and they compare different, similar days out which was useful recently as we were going to travel quite a bit further for a farm but after her comparison with a more local farm I discovered that the more local one meets our needs more with my LO current age.

Yorkshire Tots to Teens had this nicely wrapped up for Yorkshire.

"Has" not "had", it's still going.

FamiliesOnline do a lot of the kinds of things you describe (it started as a magazine, unifying brand but local listings, became online about 20 years ago though I think the actual magazines still exist)

Have a poke about on their site. Can you outdo it? Or will you be limiting yourself to regions other than the ones they have covered?

There was something called Hoop I used when kids were younger (think it still exists) - all the big franchises like little kickers etc used it so it was pretty good.

This is a very saturated market already, tbh I’m not sure how a newcomer would break into it without huge capital investment or make money from it.

I agree with this and would add ratings/ reviews by parents of ASD children would be useful.