Why no marketplace?
A marketplace shifts incentives toward partner volume and away from fit. Until WhereNext has enough recurring lead volume to make rotation + bench-strength real, automated matching would push mediocre fits at users who aren’t in a position to evaluate them. Manual routing keeps the responsibility on us.
We’ll revisit when (a) lead volume is > 20 / week per category, (b) we have at least 3 vetted partners per category per destination, and (c) we have a published quality benchmark partners must hit to stay listed.