STARTUP SPOTLIGHT: WHERE TO TONIGHT?

Have you ever tried to visit your favourite venue on a different night only to find it's not at all what your were expecting? The atmosphere has changed, the vibe is off, it doesn't feel like the same friendly place you've spent your Friday nights. So what's happened? It could be uni night, trivia night, gay or lesbian night or even a sporting event. Whatever the reason, this is not the place you want to spend tonight.

It's the same story around the world, whether you're a local or a tourist the nightlife scene in every city changes night by night, venue to venue. Sure there are plenty of websites and travel guides that list venues with a short synopsis usually describing the decor, but they all seem to fail to provide that one crucial piece of information, where to tonight?

You could do a Google search for venues around your location with a specific feature, use listing sites to find the most popular, then cross reference the venues with their social media content and work out if they were a good place to visit tonight. But who has time for that, especially knowing it is not easy to perform while out on the town, and most of the time still doesn't provide the information you need.

Avid nightlife seekers and entrepreneurs Ryan Chartres and Keir McHarg put their heads together and came up with a solution. The idea was to build a nightlife search engine that made every aspect of a venue searchable on a nightly basis. This included features, food and drinks, facilities, and entertainment. The information would be provided by the venues giving them the power to promote all their nightly activities to potential customers. The model would bring together all venues from the raging nightclubs, to quiet hidden bars and regional pubs, making a one stop source of information for tourists and locals alike.

Over the past two years the small four person team that makes up Where To Tonight have worked tirelessly on weekends, after hours, and through Christmas holidays to turn the concept into a start up. Taking the final plunge the team quit their jobs earlier this year and wheretotonight.com beta went live on October 17.  With an official launch date of January 2014 accompanied by a native app for both IOS and Android, Where To Tonight is poised to become a recognized resource for venues and customers both in Australia and globally.

Now that you know about this great little start up you're probably getting thirsty, why not head to www.wheretotonight.com and find somewhere near you tonight.