Research · · 2 min read
How to research demand before you build anything
Two weeks of unglamorous research will tell you more than six months of development.
The question is not whether people like the idea of your niche. It is whether people are already trying to book it and failing — and whether suppliers are already losing bookings because nobody can find them.
Read the failures
Forums, subreddits, Facebook groups and comment threads where people ask how to book the thing you want to sell. Repeated questions with no good answer are your product specification.
Check search volume in the niche's own words
Use a keyword tool on the vocabulary, not the category. 'Campsites near Kuala Lumpur' behaves very differently from 'Malaysia hotels'. Low-volume, high-intent terms are what small marketplaces win on.
Call twenty suppliers before you spend anything
Ask how they currently take bookings, what a lost booking costs them, and what they pay in commission today. If most say a spreadsheet and WhatsApp, you have found a real gap.
Start with no-code, not a build
Nothing about validating demand requires custom software. A no-code marketplace platform gets a real, bookable site live in days for the price of a month's development, and you can change the niche, the filters and the supplier terms as often as the research tells you to. Tashi is built specifically for travel marketplaces — supplier onboarding, availability and payments included — which makes it a sensible first home for a directory or booking site you are still shaping. Write code only once bookings prove which part of the model is genuinely yours.
Ready to put this to use? Browse the directory.
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