Founder Story: AttractionsNearMe.co.uk

Meet Dan, the visionary behind AttractionsNearMe.co.uk

In the second post of the “Founder Story” series, we explore AttractionsNearMe.co.uk, the go-to guide for anyone exploring fun, family-friendly experiences across the UK. From big theme parks to hidden countryside spots, Dan saw a simple need: people wanted an easy way to find deals, honest reviews, and up-to-date info for their next day out.

With a love for family adventures and a passion for sharing valuable tips, he launched AttractionsNearMe.co.uk as a straightforward directory to help others plan great outings. What started as a small personal project has become a thriving community, connecting families and friends with top attractions while keeping things practical and budget-friendly.

Dan’s story shows what dedication and a clear vision can do. By focusing on reliable info and ease of use, he built a platform that genuinely helps people. Whether you’re looking for roller coaster reviews or special offers, it’s all there in one place. He’s faced the usual challenges of running a niche site but stayed committed to making it a valuable resource.

Stay tuned to learn how Dan turned his passion into a tool helping people discover and enjoy the UK’s best attractions!

The Attractions Near Me Story

Q: Can you share the story behind AttractionsNearMe.co.uk? How did the idea originate, and what inspired you to start it?

I always had a love for theme parks and attractions, feeling the rush of riding the roller coasters and the thrill of the big rides.  My first trips as a child were to parks like Blackpool Pleasure Beach and Flamingo Land Resort, as I got older, I discovered more parks further afield that had new attractions for me to experience.

I visited theme parks on a regular basis and it irked me to pay the gate price when there were so many discounts and promotions available.  It didn’t take me long to discover that there was always a pattern to the promotion offers that the theme parks and attractions ran.

The patterns not only included key dates such as January Sales, Black Friday etc. but they also would be newspaper promotions, offers on drinks and snack packets and supermarket loyalty reward programs. 

I started paying more attention to the savings that I made and when and where I sourced them from and it was thanks to this knowledge that I became known as the go to person when anyone was planning a day out.  My friends and family would ask me for recommendations on where to visit, when was the best time to go, where to buy the cheapest tickets etc.

It was when I was working on a project at work that Attractions Near Me came about, we were building websites for our customers to help them sell their products online and the company that we were working with wanted to charge a small fortune for SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). 

I wanted a way of testing how well a website would perform without spending this money if it was built in a structured way that followed Google’s guidelines.  To avoid any conflict of interest I decided to base this website on my knowledge of theme parks and attractions.

Q: When you first launched AttractionsNearMe.co.uk, was it intended as a directory, a blog, or something different?

When I first launched Attractions Near Me, I immediately installed Geodirectory so that I could build an easy-to-use directory to help users locate theme parks and attractions across the UK. 

I knew that in order to rank well on Google the directory listings would need to be more than just a Business Name, address and telephone number, so I took the time to visit each of the attractions and see in person what they had to offer, this also allowed me to capture photos and videos which I could use for my directory listings. 

Whilst doing this I also created a blog to share the best deals and discounts for people visiting these attractions.

Q: What business model did you adopt at the beginning? Has it evolved over time?

For a good number of years, Attractions Near Me was a hobby that I did in my spare time, it was a way of sharing our adventures and helping members of the public discover new places to visit. 

It wasn’t about making money, it was about having fun, sharing our experiences and helping others. There was no business plan, we were just having a good time and helping others have a good time too.

We still follow the same ethos today, but the website is now a much bigger entity than I could ever have imagined, competing with some of the big businesses in the travel industry.

Q: Did you build the platform in-house or outsource the development? What influenced your decision?

The website was built in-house using WordPress so I could install free plugins and run the site for very little cost.  The reason for this was to test the theory of whether a website built using very limited resources could still rank well on Google.

Q: What was the biggest challenge you faced in the early days of AttractionsNearMe.co.uk? How did you overcome it?

The biggest challenge I faced was acquiring images that I could use on the site, this often meant having to visit an attraction before I could list it. 

Nowadays, attractions approach us asking to be included in the directory, often supplying us with high-quality images taken by professional photographers.

Q: At what point did AttractionsNearMe.co.uk start gaining significant traction, and what do you think contributed most to this growth?

One of the major turning points for Attractions Near Me was when we had the first Covid lockdown in March 2020.  Like everyone else in the UK, it stopped us from being able to get out and visit attractions but it became apparent to me just how difficult things were for attractions, especially those with animals to feed and support.

With our interest in Theme Parks and Attractions, we came across a Facebook page for ‘The Bird and Sea Lion Show‘ at Flamingo Land Resort. It was not common knowledge that they were a small company that operated the bird and sea lion shows within the North Yorkshire Theme Park and Zoo.

Sadly, with no income coming in they were starting to find the costs almost impossible to cover. 

We agreed to help support the ‘The Bird and Sea Lion Show‘ and in return, they presented a live Sea Lion Show using our Facebook Page, bringing joy and entertainment to families and their children across the UK.

The event proved really popular with over 4K people tuning in to watch the live show,  increasing our Facebook following from 2.5K to over 6K overnight. 

In the process, we raised enough money to support the ‘The Bird and Sea Lion Show‘ and help see them through this tough period.

Following on from our initial Live Show we have maintained our partnership with ‘The Bird and Sea Lion Show‘ and the animals who are involved in the shows have made regular appearances on our Facebook Page.

Flamingo Land Resort is our local park and we have been watching both the Bird and Sea Lion shows since we were children and like many other families, we now take our own children to watch the shows.

Q: Securing the first paid listing can be a milestone for directory businesses. What was your experience with this, and how did you convince businesses to join?

We are currently in the early stages of introducing paid listings. Historically, rather than selling paid listings, we utilised affiliate links.

Q: Did you start with free listings, paid listings, or a combination of both? What strategy worked best for you?

When building a directory from the ground up no one wants to pay for a listing without any potential return on investment, and our opinion was that we wouldn’t get anywhere if we didn’t have any places listed on our website.

To overcome this challenge, we listed all of the places that we had visited and added affiliate links where they were available. 

Regardless of whether we got any contribution from the company that we were listing, we would still include them anyway because it was important to us that we covered the whole market.

Q: Community engagement is often crucial for directory success. How have you fostered and maintained a connection with the attractions community over the years?

Over time, we have built relationships with lots of people in the attractions industry.

Our contacts cover a wide selection of job roles ranging from zoo keepers, maintenance teams and ride operators to attraction owners and company directors, with many now also being friends as well as business associates.

We also work closely with marketing teams and marketing agencies covering attraction news, offers and events. We spend a lot of time travelling, experiencing new attractions and attending trade shows.

This is one of my favourite parts of the job as we have a lot of fun and we get to meet lots of like-minded people.  We are also members of the Roller Coaster Club of Great Britain RCCGB and the European Coaster Club ECC.

Q: What have been some of your most effective strategies for driving traffic to the website?

We utilise a number of strategies to help drive traffic to our website. 

I believe that one of the keys to our success is that our unique content combined with accurate and informative information not only appeals to our audience but also the search engines, helping drive a lot of organic traffic to our website. 

I think that the way Geodirectory structures the data also helps with this.  In addition to traffic coming from the major search engines we have a lot of people subscribe to our email newsletters and also, a healthy number of followers on our social media channels.

Q: Maintaining quality and accuracy in listings is vital for trust. How do you ensure this on AttractionsNearMe.co.uk?

We regularly review our attraction listings to ensure that the details are up to date. 

We stay informed by closely monitoring any new developments in the industry using a combination of social media, press releases and trade memberships.

Thanks to our close working relationships, the attractions also proactively advise us when anything of note is happening that may require an update to their listing.

Q: Can you share some of the biggest mistakes you’ve made while running AttractionsNearMe.co.uk and how you’ve learned from them?

By far, the biggest mistake that we made was to employ someone to help improve our domain rating, it quickly increased but unfortunately, unbeknown to us they had utilised some underhand tactics which Google quickly picked up on and penalised us for.

Q: Would you be open to sharing a ballpark figure for AttractionsNearMe.co.uk’s annual revenue?

I first started the website as a hobby, and it was 5 years before it made any money.  Since then, our turnover has doubled year on year, and is now into 5 figures, but I am unsure how long this trend is going to continue. 

The large majority of revenue that we have generated has been reinvested back into Attractions Near Me on key elements such as improved hosting, professional versions of our website plugins, marketing and graphic design. 

This year we are working with a number of professionals to help take the website to another level.

Last year we bought the https://www.attractionsnearme.com/ domain and we are investing a lot of money into building a new Worldwide directory applying what we have learnt from our UK website with GeoDirectory again acting as the heart of our new website.

Q: What tech stack is AttractionsNearMe.co.uk built on, and has it changed over time? If you could start over, would you choose a different technology or approach?

Attractions Near Me is built using WordPress, with Geodirectory as one of our core plugins. We recently transferred our website hosting from Hostgator to Cloudways Digital Ocean, which has led to significant performance improvements. To further improve performance, we also use Cloudflare and WP Rocket.

Q: What role does SEO play in your business strategy, and how have you stayed ahead of competitors in search rankings?

We have always monitored the performance of our website but never invested a great deal in SEO.  Recently, we have seen an increase in the number of competitors, so to remain competitive SEO is one of the key areas that we will be investing in this year.

Q: Are there specific tools, platforms, or software that have been indispensable to running AttractionsNearMe.co.uk?

The key tool behind our website is Geodirectory.  We have utilised this software from the very beginning and it really is a fantastic product, we have found that the customer support is superb and they really understand the key role that the software plays in our business.

Other notable pieces of software include WPRocket, which does a great job of optimising our website performance and the Sydney Theme from AThemes.

Q: Looking back, what advice would you give to someone starting their own directory or niche website today?

I think the best advice I could give is to lay out a plan of what you are looking to achieve before you start.  It is important to have a structure that is easy to navigate for both your users and the search engines.

Q: What trends or opportunities in the directory business do you think entrepreneurs should focus on in the coming years?

If you are looking to build a directory then you need to focus on an industry that you are either knowledgeable about or have a passion for, or even better still a combination of both.

Q: If you could change one thing about how you’ve built or managed AttractionsNearMe.co.uk, what would it be?

I would put more emphasis on the directory structure, as Attractions Near Me has evolved over time I feel that our menu structure has become too complex and not as user-friendly as it should be, this is something that we are now planning to rectify.

Q: What’s next for AttractionsNearMe.co.uk? Are there any exciting updates, features, or expansions on the horizon?

We are in the process of implementing an AI Chatbot on AttractionsNearMe.co.uk to help users quickly locate the information that they are looking for. We are planning to invest in our SEO and also looking at the possibility of expanding our team.

Our main objectives for 2025 are to increase the following on our YouTube Channel and continue building a new website covering the many Theme Parks across the world using what we learnt from building our UK website. 

You can follow our progress at https://www.attractionsnearme.com/