What is the Remote Year Marketplace?

Living and working in a new city every month is a dream, a new type of lifestyle, and an opportunity more professionals are taking advantage of than ever before. If you’re one of them, you know that you’re not only interested in finding great workspaces where you can get down to business and beautiful accommodations where you can rest your head, but also in experiencing what life is really like in each city that you visit.

It’s not an easy quest. If we’re being honest with ourselves, when we arrive in a new place for the first time, we  sometimes fall into the trap of relying on the experiences that are easiest to find. We go to the #1 taco cart on TripAdvisor. We set out on safari with the company that we found recommended in our tourist guide. We head out for an egg coffee from the café with the most aesthetically pleasing photos on Instagram.

These experiences are great, but they rarely give you an inside look into what life is like for a local. After racking up a bucket list’s worth of memories, you still don’t feel like you have more than a surface level understanding of the country’s history, its triumphs and hardships, or its unique perspective.

Even when you’ve been living in a city for a long period of time, you can still feel like a tourist.

Not so on Remote Year.

When you join a work and travel program, you’re paying for a platform that handles the logistics, but you’re also opening yourself up to authentic, local experiences that you wouldn’t have been able to find on your own. Remote Year not only provides you with a community of professionals from around the world, it also has local experts on staff in each destination (called the Remote Year City Team) that have local networks that include artisans, public figures, business owners, and storytellers.

City Team members are generous with their knowledge of the city, giving great recommendations for things to do, see, eat, and explore, but they also use their unique perspective and connections to curate unique events that are not available to the average tourist. These experiences simply don’t exist in the current market - they’re curated with the utmost care to deliver cultural impact. Using feedback from past Remote Year groups, City Teams have honed each local experience to ensure that participants experience an extra level of connection with the city and its culture.

Imagine what it would be like to learn how to play a taiko drum in Japan from those who have honed their skills for their entire lives. Picture yourself foraging for seafood in South Africa and preparing a traditional meal with your findings alongside locals. See yourself sitting down for dinner with a refugee family in Malaysia, eating traditional food while learning their story one-on-one. Visualize what it would look and sound like to attend an authentic lucha libre match. The thundering shouts of the crowd, the wrestlers fighting to the finish, clothed in bright, traditional masks and wild costumes.

Opportunities like these don’t come around often.

All of these experiences and more are available to Remote Year participants. Now, however, choosing which of these opportunities to participate in has become a whole lot easier. Introducing the Remote Year Marketplace.

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What is Remote Year Marketplace?

The Remote Year Marketplace is the one-stop online shop for curated and unique local experiences, chosen by Remote Year City Team members. These experiences include Tracks™, Plus Events, side trips, and other one-off local experiences that Remotes are interested in.

Furthermore, the Marketplace is a great resource for current Remotes to use to get acquainted with their upcoming destination. Each city has its own Marketplace, with access to a City Guide that contains relevant information on  workspaces, accommodations, local entertainment, and must-sees, as well as need-to-know facts like currency, commonly used phrases in the local language, and what to expect as far as public transportation.

Remote Year participants are given access to each city’s Marketplace in the week leading up to their arrival. Once given access, they can choose their desired Tracks™ for the month, and other experiences at will, using the simplified interface of the Remote Year Marketplace.

“I very much enjoyed the new Marketplace for an a-la-carte approach to choosing activities and as a payment platform,” a member of Remote Year Atlas said.

In addition to making Remote Year-curated events easier to attend, the Marketplace also makes choosing a side trip simple. Many Remote Year destinations are close to other must-see cities, islands, and attractions, so participants embark on so-called side trips, usually on the weekends, to check out these can’t-miss sites.

For example, while in Hanoi, many Remotes will make a weekend trip to Ha Long Bay to see its natural beauty. When there is a particularly popular side trip, the Marketplace may suggest one of our preferred partners for the trip. Take Machu Picchu for instance. While in Lima, it’s common practice for a large group of Remotes to want to head to Cusco to see this Wonder of the World. The Remote Year Marketplace gives participants easy access to a booking site for a well-known company that leads tours to this 15th century Inca site. A few clicks is all it takes to make this dream side trip a reality.

The Remote Year Marketplace is a new feature of the Remote Year platform, but we are already looking for ways to expand it in order to make the overall experience easier for participants. For now, it’s the go-to spot for seeking out local experiences and choosing your desired Tracks™, but who knows what the future holds?

Have an idea for the Remote Year Marketplace? Reach out using our Contact Form, or send us a DM on social media!