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Design Consultant · Product Strategy & UX
2022 – 2023 · Emilia-Romagna, Italy (Remote)
fairUP: Designing a Three-Sided Marketplace for Ethical Travel
Design Consultant · Product Strategy & UX
2022 – 2023 · Emilia-Romagna, Italy (Remote)
Context
Fairbnb had proven that ethical accommodation was viable—a cooperative model that reinvested 50% of commissions into local communities across Europe. But accommodation was only one part of travel. What about the tours, workshops, and cultural exchanges that shape a trip?
That's where fairUP came in: a spin-off platform designed to bring Fairbnb's ethical framework into the world of travel experiences. The challenge wasn't just adding a new product category—it was building an entirely different transaction model that required rethinking how trust, quality, and community impact could be verified at scale.
I led product design from concept through launch, working with the product owner, engineering team, and Locals from Zero (an existing community-driven travel initiative that fairUP incubated and integrated). The result was a platform that secured acceptance into the MIT DesignX Incubator with €50,000 in early-stage funding—validation that the model was both novel and viable.
The Problem
Fairbnb's existing platform was built for accommodation: a two-sided marketplace where hosts list properties and guests book stays. The transaction is relatively straightforward—standardized attributes (location, capacity, amenities), clear expectations, and a familiar mental model borrowed from decades of hospitality infrastructure.
Experiences are different. A cooking class in Naples isn't comparable to a guided hike in the Dolomites. Quality is subjective. Authenticity is hard to verify. And the ethical dimension—ensuring experiences genuinely benefit local communities rather than extracting value—requires mechanisms that go beyond user reviews.
Adding experiences to Fairbnb's existing platform would have introduced structural complexity: different booking flows, different vetting processes, and different expectations for what "ethical" means in this context. Rather than stretch the accommodation platform to accommodate a fundamentally different product, the decision was made to build fairUP as a distinct offering—one that could iterate quickly, establish its own identity, and eventually integrate back into the Fairbnb ecosystem once the model proved viable.
Why Three Sides?
Most travel experience platforms are two-sided: hosts create listings, guests book them. Quality control happens reactively through reviews, which means the first few customers bear the risk of a subpar experience.
fairUP introduced a third user type: scouts—local community members, sustainability advocates, and cultural connectors who discover, vet, and vouch for experiences before they're listed. This proactive vetting layer was central to fairUP's ethical positioning: every experience on the platform had to meet specific criteria around community benefit, environmental impact, and cultural authenticity before guests ever saw it.
This created complexity:
Scouts needed tools to evaluate experiences against ethical criteria, document their findings, and submit recommendations. Their workflow was part discovery (finding hosts), part assessment (applying frameworks borrowed from Locals from Zero), and part storytelling (making the case for why an experience deserved to be featured).
Hosts needed an onboarding process that didn't feel bureaucratic but still collected the information scouts and guests required—what makes the experience unique, how it benefits the local community, how it aligns with sustainability principles. They also needed visibility into the vetting process so they understood why certain aspects mattered.
Guests needed confidence that every listed experience had been meaningfully vetted, not just algorithmically approved. The interface had to make ethical criteria visible without overwhelming the browsing experience—showing impact metrics, community stories, and scout endorsements in ways that felt natural, not preachy.
The design challenge was creating three distinct but interconnected experiences that felt coherent as a system.
Key Design Decisions
Defining User Flows and Interactions
I started by mapping how the three user types would intersect. Scouts discover hosts and submit them for consideration. Hosts complete onboarding and provide the details that become their public listing. Guests browse, filter by impact categories, and book. Each user needed to understand where they fit in the larger system without needing to see the full operational complexity.We inherited frameworks and processes from Locals from Zero, a community-driven initiative focused on authentic, locally rooted travel experiences. Rather than start from scratch, we integrated their existing protocols—criteria for evaluating community benefit, environmental responsibility, and cultural authenticity—and translated them into structured workflows within fairUP.
For scouts, that meant designing an evaluation form that wasn't just a checklist but a guided process: What makes this experience distinctive? Who benefits economically? How does it connect to local culture or environment? The form captured qualitative narrative alongside quantitative scores, giving hosts meaningful feedback and giving guests richer context.
For hosts, onboarding focused on transparency. Instead of asking for compliance with opaque guidelines, we explained why certain information mattered and how it would be presented to guests. This reduced friction and positioned vetting as collaborative rather than gatekeeping.
For guests, discovery needed to surface ethical dimensions without making every interaction feel like homework. We designed filtering by impact categories (community-led, eco-conscious, culturally immersive) and surfaced scout endorsements directly on listing cards. The goal: make values-based decisions easy, not effortful.
Making Ethical Vetting Visible
One risk with any "ethical" platform is that the claims feel abstract. We addressed this by making the vetting process legible. Each experience listing included:- The scout who recommended it, with a short bio explaining their connection to the community
- Specific impact metrics (e.g., "80% of proceeds go directly to the host's cooperative")
- Narrative context about why the experience mattered—not marketing copy, but grounded stories
This transparency built trust. Guests could see that someone with local knowledge had personally vetted the experience, and hosts appreciated the recognition.
Brand Identity Within the Fairbnb Ecosystem
fairUP needed its own identity—distinct enough to feel like a new product, aligned enough to feel connected to Fairbnb. I developed a visual system that shared Fairbnb's cooperative values and color foundations but introduced a slightly more exploratory, less transactional tone. The interface felt less about booking and more about discovering—appropriate for a product where the experience itself, not just the transaction, was central.Positioning and Pitch
To secure funding and institutional support, we developed a pitch deck that positioned fairUP within the broader responsible tourism movement. The deck outlined:
- The Problem: Most travel experience platforms prioritize volume and convenience over community impact and sustainability.
- The Model: A three-sided marketplace where scouts vet experiences, hosts provide them, and guests book with confidence that their choices support local communities.
- The Opportunity: Sustainable tourism is growing, but infrastructure for ethical experiences lags behind ethical accommodation. fairUP fills that gap.
- The Business Case: Same cooperative model as Fairbnb—50% of commissions reinvested into local projects—but applied to a category with higher margins and repeat engagement.
The pitch worked. fairUP was accepted into the MIT DesignX Incubator in Venice, accompanied by €5,000 in early-stage funding. That external validation mattered—not just for resources, but as proof that the model resonated beyond Fairbnb's existing community.
Outcomes and Evolution
Post-launch, fairUP began gaining traction. Experiences were listed, scouts onboarded, guests booked. The platform demonstrated that the three-sided model was operationally viable and that users valued the transparency it provided.
As the product matured, conversations shifted toward integration. Running fairUP as a standalone platform had allowed rapid iteration and product-market fit testing, but long-term, there were efficiencies in bringing experiences back into the Fairbnb ecosystem—shared infrastructure, unified user accounts, cross-promotion between accommodation and experiences. Those discussions were underway as my engagement concluded, with the architecture and design systems I'd built serving as the foundation for future integration.
What Made It Work
Starting With Inherited Knowledge
Rather than invent evaluation frameworks from scratch, we built on Locals from Zero's existing protocols. That grounding in real community practice made the vetting process credible and gave us a head start on defining what "ethical" meant operationally.
Designing for Three Perspectives Simultaneously
The complexity wasn't technical—it was conceptual. Each user type had different goals, but their workflows intersected. Designing those intersections clearly—where scouts hand off to hosts, where hosts present to guests—was the core challenge.
Transparency as Product Strategy
Making the vetting process visible didn't just build trust—it differentiated fairUP from competitors who claim ethics without showing the work. That transparency became a product feature, not just a marketing message.