Who are we and what is 7 Places all about?

Hello! I am David Maher Roberts and 7 Places is my brain child and passion project. The idea was born from my love of travel (and my obsession with finding and then recommending the best places for my friends to experience and ideally rave about) and mashing it up with my experience of using computers to create recommendations in large numbers.

Back in 2008-2012 I ran a music and video recommendation system (called The Filter) with none other than Peter Gabriel (Sledgehammer and Don’t Give Up). I learnt a lot about using machine learning (basically, early AI) to make recommendations for video, music and books and I came out of that experience with a belief that what machines can do to reduce millions of things to just a handful of more relevant things, is simply amazing. And this is only getting better with new AI tools. But (and it is a big but), right now you still need people to check and curate those things to make sure they are right (not just for the audience, but also to avoid the AI recommending things that are plainly wrong).

And so this is what we have done with 7 Places.

7 Places is designed for the curious traveller. People who want to find places that are off the beaten track, places that the locals go to, places that will delight them and that they will want to recommend to their friends. Ideally, places that are not filled only with tourists.

For every city that we feature, we use a number of AI agents to create a long list of places and experiences that fit the 7 Places criteria. We then test out the AI recommendations (I know, it’s a hard life, but someone has to do it) and we end up with just 7 places that we know, for sure, are worth recommending.

The result of this computer / human collab can be found in our ‘7 places’ posts on our website and also on our socials. Do let me know what you think (follow us on Instagram) and please feel free to recommend your own hidden gems from your travels.

p.s. The best way to get our latest travel recommendations is to sign up to our weekly email in the box below. A great way to be inspired for your next travel adventure.