Tamara Lohan, co-founder and CTO of Mr & Mrs Smith, on how she transformed her offline business into a digital pioneer.
Mr & Mrs Smith was born in an offline world. In 2002, people chose their hotels on the basis of what they read in newspapers and magazines, by what their friends told them, and by the recommendations of fusty old guidebooks.
We were sick of being steered to disappointing hotels by guidebooks that felt irrelevant to us and our lifestyle, so we decided to create a guide that gave you the inside track on the best, and only the best, boutique hotels in the UK. In the young-web days of 2002, that was obviously going to be an offline, ink-and-paper product....