How I Built It: Maslol Serves Growing Demand for Self-Guided Digital Tours

Meet Idan Dahan, co-founder of Maslol — a new platform that helps tour guide companies, online travel agencies, hotels, and local attractions to create their own branded digital tours and smart maps.

Idan Dahan is a solo travel enthusiast, entrepreneur, and new dad who co-founded Maslol, a SaaS platform that helps travel, culinary, art, and education businesses offer self-guided tours.

In this interview Dahan shares his story about he created an online experiences marketplace, which led to the creation of Maslol with co-founders Shlomo and Eitan.

How did you get started in the tourism industry?

It started with “Dguide”, a marketplace of self-guided digital tours built by tour guides and bloggers we launched in 2020, which saw thousands of downloads and sales.

After returning from extensive travel, I realized most tourism businesses weren’t equipped to engage independent travelers — those who prefer exploring at their own pace. We began researching the space and found that a huge portion of the market goes underserved.

Soon after, tourism businesses began asking for our technology and support to create their own branded digital tours and smart maps. They wanted white-label solutions fully embedded into their websites.

That led to the creation of Maslol — a platform empowering tour operators, cruise lines, and hotels to offer scalable, branded, immersive digital experiences and unlock new revenue streams with modern travelers.

Idan Dahan, co-founder of Maslol.

Maslol was launched in mid-2023 by our team of three founders: myself, Shlomo (CTO), and Eitan, who leads business development and partnerships. We combine backgrounds in tech, content strategy, and international tourism.

What is Maslol and who are your customers?

Maslol enables tourism businesses to create interactive, multilingual digital tours to expand their services, increase revenue and elevate their customers’ experience. Digital tours are created using our smart content tools, or through our content services team.

Our customers includes tour guides companies, online travel agencies (OTAs), hotels, cruise companies and local attractions who want to drive revenue, attract independent travelers, and offer modern, branded visitor experiences that work directly from mobile browsers like Chrome, Safari, or Firefox.

Our digital tours and recommendation maps are used by clients across Germany, Spain, London, Japan, and Israel. They enjoy the simplicity of creating branded digital tours using our platform, the built-in AI tools that assist with content creation and translation, and the option to get hands-on support from our team.

Digital tours support multimedia (text, images, video, trivia, audio) and work seamlessly on mobile browsers.

How did you prove the business case for self-guided digital tours?

One of our first Maslol clients was a Japan-based tour operator who sells attractions, guided experiences, and custom trip planning. He was the first to build digital tours on our platform and decided to market them at $25 USD each. To our surprise, he reached over 1,000 sales per month, generating around $25,000 in revenue.

Both my co-founder and I were amazed by the demand — not just by the volume of purchases but also by the incredible feedback he received. It proved to us that digital tours aren’t just an add-on — they can be a standalone product with real impact and profitability.

What is the business model for Maslol?

Maslol offers a usage-based SaaS model with optional content creation packages. Target clients include tourism boards, municipalities, hotels, cruise lines, tour guiding companies, and travel planners who want to offer white-label digital experiences to their visitors. Learn more in our case studies.

Maslol powers a self-guided graffiti tour in Paris.

Operators can also upsell additional services — we support affiliate ticketing links, cross-promotion of other physical and digital tours, and even local upsells like food tastings or curated shopping experiences. The end-of-tour screen is fully customizable.

Maslol is expanding and open to partnerships, resellers, and digital tourism innovators — get in contact!

How can a traditional tour operator benefit from self-guided tours?

Focus on your knowledge and how it can be turned into passive income and value for your travelers. Many tourism professionals hold a wealth of untapped stories and insights.

Digital tours can turn that expertise into recurring revenue, multilingual content, and access to audiences far beyond traditional formats.

Start simple and authentic, iterate with real feedback, and always prioritize the value for the end travelers.

How long does it take a customer to develop a self-guided tour?

With prepared content, it can take a few hours. With our tools or assistance, it typically takes a few days depending on scope. Updates are easily managed via the dashboard, and the tours remain live and accessible on any mobile browser.

Everything is built into our platform — no need for video editing, audio recording, or design tools. We use integrated AI to help users create multimedia content that remains personal, engaging, and true to their brand.

What is your tech stack? What new features are you working on?

We use React, Node.js, Firebase, and a suite of AI tools. One of the biggest challenges has been making a powerful yet simple interface — especially for non-technical clients — while supporting full white-label flexibility and multi-language content delivery.

Maslol’s development team are working with and building AI tools.

We’re currently developing advanced AI tools designed to keep content both authentic and scalable — including automated translation into multiple languages (text, audio, and video) to help tourism businesses reach broader audiences with minimal effort.

One of our most exciting updates is the upcoming Multi-Day Tour feature, which will allow operators to bundle multiple digital experiences across several days — perfect for multi-stop itineraries and longer travel programs.

What advice would you give to aspiring travel tech founders?

Build only what people are asking for. Talk with customers weekly, and treat every objection as a feature request in disguise. Tourism is about people and emotion — keep that human focus at the center.

— Thanks, Idan for sharing your story!

Learn more about Maslol at maslol.io. Connect with Idan on Travel Massive and LinkedIn.