Back in 1996, when we first started Must Love Travel, our website had exactly seven pages.
That was it.
No social media.
No online booking engines.
No endless stream of travel content.
Just a simple idea… and a willingness to figure things out as we went.
The Early Days
At the time, the internet was still new territory.
We didn’t have a roadmap.
What we did have was a belief that if we could answer the questions people were already asking about travel — where to stay, what to do, how it all worked — we could build something useful.
So that’s what we did.
Page by page.
Learning as We Went
We didn’t come into this as web developers.
In fact, a lot of what we built early on came from trial and error.
We worked with a developer to get started, but before long, I found myself learning HTML from a book and making updates myself.
It wasn’t perfect.
But it worked.
And more importantly, it kept moving forward.
What Made It Work
Looking back, the success of those early days didn’t come from having everything figured out.
It came from focusing on a few simple things:
- being helpful
- answering real questions
- showing up consistently
That was enough to start building trust.
And over time, that trust turned into relationships.
What Hasn’t Changed
Today, the tools are different.
The platforms are more advanced.
The pace is faster.
But the foundation is exactly the same.
People are still looking for:
- clear answers
- honest guidance
- someone they can trust
A Simple Reminder
It’s easy to look at everything available today and feel like you need to do more.
More tools.
More content.
More complexity.
But sometimes it’s worth remembering:
We started with seven pages.
And a focus on helping people.
Thirty years later, we’re still building.
Still learning.
Still focused on the same thing we were back then:
Helping people have better travel experiences.
If you’re thinking about your next trip, we’d love to help you plan it with the kind of experience that only comes from doing this for a long time.