One thread runs through Peter's whole career: bringing the right people together, at scale. After early years in international hospitality — including a spell with Golden Tulip Hotels — he became a serial entrepreneur in digital matchmaking. He founded and sold Nationale Vacaturebank, one of the Netherlands' best-known job platforms, and then built Jobbird. Two companies, one idea: connect the right person with the right opportunity.
When that same instinct followed him to Portugal, it simply found a new subject — the table. The same quiet satisfaction of a perfect match, this time between a hungry guest and the place they didn't yet know they were looking for.
He settled in Almancil, in the heart of the Algarve's golden triangle, and found a region full of brilliant kitchens that almost nobody was writing about honestly. The loudest praise went to the places best at marketing — not the ones best at cooking. To a born matchmaker, that mismatch was unbearable: the right guests and the right tables simply weren't finding each other.
So he started doing the simplest, hardest thing — going out unannounced, photographing every dish at the table and writing down the truth. One restaurant at a time, that became Hotspots: the same matchmaking, now between hungry people and the places genuinely worth their evening. First across the Algarve, now all of Portugal.
"The best cooks are rarely the best marketers. Someone has to make sure the right people find them."Peter Cruiming
Almancil · Algarve