These are the types of problems that a 22 year old with a BS in Comp Sci are capable of solving. Which is why both spaces are so crowded: there isn't really any

These are the types of problems that a 22 year old with a BS in Comp Sci are capable of solving. Which is why both spaces are so crowded: there isn't really anything difficult about the business, the consumer experience sucks, and they're decentralized enough to actually break into. The reason the industry sucks is further down the value chain, and you have no realistic shot at changing any of it unless you can also break into the (much bigger, much more profitable and much more competitive) business travel services market. But neither of these businesses leads to "sticky" customers: people don't travel frequently enough to develop brand loyalty to a travel site, and for a dating site, the ideal scenario for your customers is that they find someone and stop subscribing to your site. This is the kind of business problem that's not readily apparent until you start to dive into the customer lifecycle and personas. As a result, dating and travel sites are essentially branded experiences where the only difference between many of them is the advertising.