I've been an enthusiastic traveler my whole life — the kind of person who seeks out local history and wants to understand a place beyond the obvious stops. Self-guided tours are one of my favorite ways to do that. But somewhere along the way I started noticing a pattern: the tour exists, the content is good, and then you're handed a PDF.
Try navigating from a PDF on your phone while you're standing on a street corner and you'll understand why I eventually decided to do something about it.
My background is in geography and spatial software — I've spent my career building systems that help people understand and navigate the world. So when I kept running into destination organizations with rich, carefully produced self-guided tour content that was essentially stranded in print or PDF format, it felt like a solvable problem. Adding analytics was an additional bonus, so organizations could actually see how people are engaging with their content. Tour completion experiences that funnel users to partner destinations, donation pages, or advertiser content has also been a high-value addition.
DestinationHub (destinationhub.io) takes existing stop-by-stop self-guided tour content — walking tours, heritage trails, main street routes, scenic drives, bike tours — and turns it into an interactive mobile experience with maps, navigation, and analytics. The organizations I'm building this for already have the content. They just need infrastructure that lets it reach people the way visitors actually travel today.
We're live with our first partner and I'm looking to work closely with a small group of DMOs and CVBs as the next pilot cohort. Organizations that want to get more out of content they've already invested in producing are prime candidates. We will create your content in the platform for you before turning over the keys to our easy-to-use content management dashboard.
Happy to connect with anyone working in this space.
I've never understood why sites can't at least give users a Google map to go with their PDFs. It drives me nuts. I usually create my own Google maps to share for road trips and local tours when I post about them on my website, that just seems like basic information and it isn't hard to do.
I think you found a great niche and hope you are overwhelmed with business. Looking forward to never again having to create my own map from a info on a screen or a PDF when I'm out exploring a new destination!
This is so interesting! I'd love to turn some of my itinerary content into these self-guided walking tours, what a great tool this would be for people to then follow that itinerary without having to add things to Google Maps themselves etc!
Travel Blogger / Youtuber / Art director, Mochileros.org
I really like the way the locations are displayed on the map. It looks like an open-world video game full of missions to complete... And that would be another great idea to develop and make the tours even more enjoyable.
DestinationHub turns self-guided tour assets into digital content travelers can use
DestinationHub turns self-guided tour assets into digital content travelers can use
was posted by Linda Richards
in
Website,Startup,Tour,Mapping,Planning.
Featured on Mar 31, 2026 (21 days ago).
This post is not rated yet.
Sharing is caring
🎉 Link copied
Share
QR Code
Welcome to Travel Massive!
Discover new ideas in travel and join our global community of innovators and thought leaders. Learn more.
+ 202 others joined this month
Comments
I've been an enthusiastic traveler my whole life — the kind of person who seeks out local history and wants to understand a place beyond the obvious stops. Self-guided tours are one of my favorite ways to do that. But somewhere along the way I started noticing a pattern: the tour exists, the content is good, and then you're handed a PDF.
Try navigating from a PDF on your phone while you're standing on a street corner and you'll understand why I eventually decided to do something about it.
My background is in geography and spatial software — I've spent my career building systems that help people understand and navigate the world. So when I kept running into destination organizations with rich, carefully produced self-guided tour content that was essentially stranded in print or PDF format, it felt like a solvable problem. Adding analytics was an additional bonus, so organizations could actually see how people are engaging with their content. Tour completion experiences that funnel users to partner destinations, donation pages, or advertiser content has also been a high-value addition.
DestinationHub (destinationhub.io) takes existing stop-by-stop self-guided tour content — walking tours, heritage trails, main street routes, scenic drives, bike tours — and turns it into an interactive mobile experience with maps, navigation, and analytics. The organizations I'm building this for already have the content. They just need infrastructure that lets it reach people the way visitors actually travel today.
We're live with our first partner and I'm looking to work closely with a small group of DMOs and CVBs as the next pilot cohort. Organizations that want to get more out of content they've already invested in producing are prime candidates. We will create your content in the platform for you before turning over the keys to our easy-to-use content management dashboard.
Happy to connect with anyone working in this space.
I've never understood why sites can't at least give users a Google map to go with their PDFs. It drives me nuts. I usually create my own Google maps to share for road trips and local tours when I post about them on my website, that just seems like basic information and it isn't hard to do.
I think you found a great niche and hope you are overwhelmed with business. Looking forward to never again having to create my own map from a info on a screen or a PDF when I'm out exploring a new destination!
This is so interesting! I'd love to turn some of my itinerary content into these self-guided walking tours, what a great tool this would be for people to then follow that itinerary without having to add things to Google Maps themselves etc!
I really like the way the locations are displayed on the map. It looks like an open-world video game full of missions to complete... And that would be another great idea to develop and make the tours even more enjoyable.