Some quick feedback - your top two screenshots are absolutely generic: city map, and then featured locations. If you're about the routes, then maybe lead with the other two screenshots and more like those.
I would forget UGC for a long while yet. Just commit to seeding/curating routes yourselves. If you want to involve influencers, generate the routes based on their travel blogs or comments and then link back to them. Saves them doing any work on what will be a wasteland app to start with.
Those screenshots were on my list to update so thank you for the reminder!
UGC: Our first phase definitely looks closer to what you're describing than the long term goal. We're seeding the major US cities ourselves, then bringing on influencers in those same cities to create routes from their own lifestyle/brand and cross-post on socials — the seeded routes give them a baseline for the format we're going for. UGC from regular users is the longer-term bet, not what we were expecting within our first week of launch.
Your "generate the routes based on their travel blogs, link back" idea is one I hadn't considered, but it's something to think about. Appreciate your input!
I like the idea of exploring what others had found before. Maybe it doesn't need to be gear towards just travel but also this gives an opportunity for locals to explore places they've never knew before too?
I've also recently launched a walking app - made for myself but thought others would enjoy too. I had added an anonymous collective walk counter which encourages others to keep walking.
BTW, Mapbox does give sponsorships to projects/apps for displaying how their product is being used so once you get to a certain level you could submit a form for it. I know this project was sponsored by them: https://gpx.studio/
Hey man, congrats on the project! And to answer your question, the app is geared towards exploration in your city as well as others. So whether you're planning on going into downtown to explore new places or planning a trip to Tennessee, you're covered both ways! Thanks for the info on the sponsorships, that's my first time hearing about it. The more you know lol.
This is almost 1:1 with a project we worked on several years ago. Unfortunately it never launched - founder ran out of money. It was one of my favourite projects we’ve done and I genuinely believed in the concept, so I was sad we couldn’t see it come to fruition. But glad someone else is giving it another go!
Without giving away anything confidential, I can say your cold start plan is very similar. Can’t say it’s a good or bad plan because we never saw it executed in practice… but it’s not unreasonable!
I think distribution and stickiness will be a challenge. Even if you get enough content that users will have a great first experience, most people don’t travel that often, so getting them to come back regularly won’t be easy.
Alex, appreciate the warmhearted comment. Especially from someone who's been in a similar spot, means a lot. Curious what stuck with you from that project, good or bad, if you're willing to share (contact info in profile if you want to talk privately).
On distribution: agreed. Stickiness is the hard part for sure. Our angle is that the app should also work as a way for users to discover their own city through other people's POVs — not just for travel. We also built in a collaboration feature and private routes, so it doubles as a planning platform whether you're going solo or with a group.
We're hoping the creation side carries the retention we're looking for. Following a route is one side of the coin. Making the route, collaborating with friends, planning places you want to visit over weeks — that's where we're estimating (hoping lol) most of our retention will come from. Can't say for sure yet, not enough data.
Thanks again for the comment!
This looks great - I funnily had a very similar idea a while back that I never got the ball on rolling on - so it's great to see you've built this. I unfortunately can't test this right now as I have an Android
Some ideas I had back then on the business side of things - you could explore getting travel influencers on board to market it and create their own custom itenararies. Then you can also connect to booking websites to earn income and give commission shares to route creators.
We are planning on launching an android version in the near future, just don't have a specific timeline yet. Looking to see how the response is from the iOS users. On the business side: influencer-created itineraries is something we're already leaning into as mentioned above (number 3). As for the other angle for monetization, we've gone back and forth on it. The thing that makes us hesitant is incentive alignment i.e once route creators earn commission on bookings, there's pressure to route people toward bookable places (hotels, paid attractions, restaurants on partner platforms) rather than the local hidden-gem stuff that's the actual value of the app. Not ruling it out—there are versions of it (transparent disclosure, opt-in by creator, separate trips vs routes surface) that might work. Just want to make sure it's done right. Appreciate your input!
Super cool! Unrelated to the idea itself, but it seems like (at least for me) the images on the desktop landing page aren't rendering on either chrome or safari
This idea is super cool! I love traveling and feel that the core of a trip is exploring local/authentic life, so your product perfectly matches my needs! If all people sharing their routes are local and the recommendations are real, not ads, it will be reliable for me to use it to find places.
Just one thing, I can't use it in my country:( Hope you can make it globally:)
Neat! One frustrating bug in the app is the forced ability to search states by two letter abbreviation. For example, if you start typing "Montana", your typing will be cut off, and Missouri will be selected, as the abbreviation for Missouri is MO.
Custom points would be great too, sometimes the search feature built in couldn't find the locations I was looking for.
Custom points was something we considered but hadn't implemented yet. That'll be coming in a future update so keep an eye out! We had a similar issue with the search bar when we were using our custom search key api. Made the switch to Apple's search and that issue got resolved (at least on our end). Thank you for pointing that out as well, we'll start looking into it. Appreciate all your input!
Thank you for everyone for giving your inputs, we really appreciate it! Just an FYI since I saw a lot of people asking, GridTravel is only available in the U.S at the moment. We have plans to expand to other markets as the app grows! Thanks again!
There is one issue: “normal locals” are usually not the best ones to walk you through their city. They never go sightseeing or to attractions meant for tourists. And tourists always want to see this top 10 things from the list. Majority don’t want to risk and go offbeat path when their resources are limited.
Thanks! Yeah that's the idea. Biggest problem we are encountering in the initial stages is just the UGC with users or lack thereof but it hasn't even been 48 hours since launch lol. Seeding major cities at the moment and as the user base grows, the hope is UGC grows as well.
Thanks! Just out of curiosity, what country do you reside in? We're iOS only for now (planning to come to android in the near future) and the App Store availability is set up market-by-market, so it'd be useful for us to know where the demand is.
If you are releasing for every country you might need to do a special form on the App Store for the EU region before they are allowed to distribute your app. I had found this out when I first released mine.
Yes, users can download routes and use navigation fully offline once a route's saved. Great for low-service areas, or just not burning data while walking around a new city. The explore page still needs a connection, but the actual trip-day experience — following a saved route, navigation, waypoints, notes, all works offline. Good question!
At the moment, it's manual creation. You build the route by placing waypoints and adding notes, tips, and a cover photo (if you prefer). So you can create the route whenever you'd like. Live recording is something we considered but planned to do later down the line. Hope this answered your question!
Great idea. My first thought: how do I trust that these routes are curated and validated rather than just AI-generated?
I'd suggest forgetting about UGC for now and focusing on routes that have a real identity behind them. When my wife and I visited Japan recently, we watched several travel vloggers to see how each one planned their exploration of different neighborhoods. We picked the ones whose style resonated with us and tried to replicate their approach.
Imagine if, for a given area in a city, you could offer an exploration route tied to a specific travel creator and how they actually did it. It would feel more authentic. There's a personality behind the route, not just an algorithm. You could pull from travel videos on YouTube, use AI to extract the route and key stops, and then attribute it: "This route was done by [vlogger]." That gives you the authenticity of UGC but with real curation.
It's also a practical way to scale up your route library without burning a hole through your pocket.
You bring up a great point...but the problem with that is we would have to ask the creators for permission on each one of their routes. Either that, or we partner up with them and they post those routes or any other routes they want. Copying their itinerary would open us up to legal trouble because of copyright issues. We already plan on incorporating travel creators with different styles as part of our UGC marketing plan. That will include promotional videos as well as UGC on the app itself. Thank you for your input!
The whole point of container is reproducibility. If my cloud job depends on the exact state of my messy, constantly changing dev environment today, how do I reproduce this exact run six months from now?
You're right on both counts, and I apologize. The U.S only thing should be visible for visitors to see, not a blockade they hit after trying to install. I also should have mentioned that in the post itself. Updating the site today. On the demo itself, we're currently in the process of creating a short walkthrough video of the app to display on the website alongside the screenshots. Adding it to this week's list. I appreciate the directness.
Some quick feedback - your top two screenshots are absolutely generic: city map, and then featured locations. If you're about the routes, then maybe lead with the other two screenshots and more like those.
I would forget UGC for a long while yet. Just commit to seeding/curating routes yourselves. If you want to involve influencers, generate the routes based on their travel blogs or comments and then link back to them. Saves them doing any work on what will be a wasteland app to start with.
Those screenshots were on my list to update so thank you for the reminder!
UGC: Our first phase definitely looks closer to what you're describing than the long term goal. We're seeding the major US cities ourselves, then bringing on influencers in those same cities to create routes from their own lifestyle/brand and cross-post on socials — the seeded routes give them a baseline for the format we're going for. UGC from regular users is the longer-term bet, not what we were expecting within our first week of launch.
Your "generate the routes based on their travel blogs, link back" idea is one I hadn't considered, but it's something to think about. Appreciate your input!
Awesome job! Congrats on the launch!
I like the idea of exploring what others had found before. Maybe it doesn't need to be gear towards just travel but also this gives an opportunity for locals to explore places they've never knew before too?
I've also recently launched a walking app - made for myself but thought others would enjoy too. I had added an anonymous collective walk counter which encourages others to keep walking.
BTW, Mapbox does give sponsorships to projects/apps for displaying how their product is being used so once you get to a certain level you could submit a form for it. I know this project was sponsored by them: https://gpx.studio/
Here is my project if you are interested to checking out. Feel free to take any feature you find in there for your app. https://github.com/walktalkmeditate/pilgrim-ios
Hey man, congrats on the project! And to answer your question, the app is geared towards exploration in your city as well as others. So whether you're planning on going into downtown to explore new places or planning a trip to Tennessee, you're covered both ways! Thanks for the info on the sponsorships, that's my first time hearing about it. The more you know lol.
Wow, this gives me such bittersweet feelings!
This is almost 1:1 with a project we worked on several years ago. Unfortunately it never launched - founder ran out of money. It was one of my favourite projects we’ve done and I genuinely believed in the concept, so I was sad we couldn’t see it come to fruition. But glad someone else is giving it another go!
Without giving away anything confidential, I can say your cold start plan is very similar. Can’t say it’s a good or bad plan because we never saw it executed in practice… but it’s not unreasonable!
I think distribution and stickiness will be a challenge. Even if you get enough content that users will have a great first experience, most people don’t travel that often, so getting them to come back regularly won’t be easy.
Best of luck - would love to see this succeed!
Alex, appreciate the warmhearted comment. Especially from someone who's been in a similar spot, means a lot. Curious what stuck with you from that project, good or bad, if you're willing to share (contact info in profile if you want to talk privately).
On distribution: agreed. Stickiness is the hard part for sure. Our angle is that the app should also work as a way for users to discover their own city through other people's POVs — not just for travel. We also built in a collaboration feature and private routes, so it doubles as a planning platform whether you're going solo or with a group.
We're hoping the creation side carries the retention we're looking for. Following a route is one side of the coin. Making the route, collaborating with friends, planning places you want to visit over weeks — that's where we're estimating (hoping lol) most of our retention will come from. Can't say for sure yet, not enough data. Thanks again for the comment!
This looks great - I funnily had a very similar idea a while back that I never got the ball on rolling on - so it's great to see you've built this. I unfortunately can't test this right now as I have an Android
Some ideas I had back then on the business side of things - you could explore getting travel influencers on board to market it and create their own custom itenararies. Then you can also connect to booking websites to earn income and give commission shares to route creators.
We are planning on launching an android version in the near future, just don't have a specific timeline yet. Looking to see how the response is from the iOS users. On the business side: influencer-created itineraries is something we're already leaning into as mentioned above (number 3). As for the other angle for monetization, we've gone back and forth on it. The thing that makes us hesitant is incentive alignment i.e once route creators earn commission on bookings, there's pressure to route people toward bookable places (hotels, paid attractions, restaurants on partner platforms) rather than the local hidden-gem stuff that's the actual value of the app. Not ruling it out—there are versions of it (transparent disclosure, opt-in by creator, separate trips vs routes surface) that might work. Just want to make sure it's done right. Appreciate your input!
Super cool! Unrelated to the idea itself, but it seems like (at least for me) the images on the desktop landing page aren't rendering on either chrome or safari
You're right, just confirmed it on our end. Getting on that now, should be fixed shortly. Appreciate you for taking the time to report it.
Just a FYI, the website is up and running if you still wanted to check it out!
This idea is super cool! I love traveling and feel that the core of a trip is exploring local/authentic life, so your product perfectly matches my needs! If all people sharing their routes are local and the recommendations are real, not ads, it will be reliable for me to use it to find places. Just one thing, I can't use it in my country:( Hope you can make it globally:)
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Neat! One frustrating bug in the app is the forced ability to search states by two letter abbreviation. For example, if you start typing "Montana", your typing will be cut off, and Missouri will be selected, as the abbreviation for Missouri is MO.
Custom points would be great too, sometimes the search feature built in couldn't find the locations I was looking for.
Custom points was something we considered but hadn't implemented yet. That'll be coming in a future update so keep an eye out! We had a similar issue with the search bar when we were using our custom search key api. Made the switch to Apple's search and that issue got resolved (at least on our end). Thank you for pointing that out as well, we'll start looking into it. Appreciate all your input!
Thank you for everyone for giving your inputs, we really appreciate it! Just an FYI since I saw a lot of people asking, GridTravel is only available in the U.S at the moment. We have plans to expand to other markets as the app grows! Thanks again!
This is actually a really fun idea. I’d honestly trust routes made by real people way more than another “top 10 places” blog post.
There is one issue: “normal locals” are usually not the best ones to walk you through their city. They never go sightseeing or to attractions meant for tourists. And tourists always want to see this top 10 things from the list. Majority don’t want to risk and go offbeat path when their resources are limited.
Thanks! Yeah that's the idea. Biggest problem we are encountering in the initial stages is just the UGC with users or lack thereof but it hasn't even been 48 hours since launch lol. Seeding major cities at the moment and as the user base grows, the hope is UGC grows as well.
I love the idea. Unfortunately, not available in my country. I hope it to be successful and see this app in my country in the future.
Thanks! Just out of curiosity, what country do you reside in? We're iOS only for now (planning to come to android in the near future) and the App Store availability is set up market-by-market, so it'd be useful for us to know where the demand is.
If you are releasing for every country you might need to do a special form on the App Store for the EU region before they are allowed to distribute your app. I had found this out when I first released mine.
As of the moment, we are only in the U.S but yes you're right on that.
South Korea
This is for the US only? Geoblocked here :(
Yes, we are only available in the U.S as of the moment. Planning on expanding into other markets in the future. Stay tuned!
Hey, I am outside of US so I can’t try but I am curious - website says it is offline, how come?
Yes, users can download routes and use navigation fully offline once a route's saved. Great for low-service areas, or just not burning data while walking around a new city. The explore page still needs a connection, but the actual trip-day experience — following a saved route, navigation, waypoints, notes, all works offline. Good question!
Does it allow seeding with prior walks or does it have to be live-collected?
At the moment, it's manual creation. You build the route by placing waypoints and adding notes, tips, and a cover photo (if you prefer). So you can create the route whenever you'd like. Live recording is something we considered but planned to do later down the line. Hope this answered your question!
Why the App is not available in Estonia? :(
Currently, the application is only available in the U.S with plans to expand in the future. Stay tuned!
Great idea. My first thought: how do I trust that these routes are curated and validated rather than just AI-generated?
I'd suggest forgetting about UGC for now and focusing on routes that have a real identity behind them. When my wife and I visited Japan recently, we watched several travel vloggers to see how each one planned their exploration of different neighborhoods. We picked the ones whose style resonated with us and tried to replicate their approach.
Imagine if, for a given area in a city, you could offer an exploration route tied to a specific travel creator and how they actually did it. It would feel more authentic. There's a personality behind the route, not just an algorithm. You could pull from travel videos on YouTube, use AI to extract the route and key stops, and then attribute it: "This route was done by [vlogger]." That gives you the authenticity of UGC but with real curation.
It's also a practical way to scale up your route library without burning a hole through your pocket.
You bring up a great point...but the problem with that is we would have to ask the creators for permission on each one of their routes. Either that, or we partner up with them and they post those routes or any other routes they want. Copying their itinerary would open us up to legal trouble because of copyright issues. We already plan on incorporating travel creators with different styles as part of our UGC marketing plan. That will include promotional videos as well as UGC on the app itself. Thank you for your input!
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The whole point of container is reproducibility. If my cloud job depends on the exact state of my messy, constantly changing dev environment today, how do I reproduce this exact run six months from now?
Looks good, wishig you a good luck!
Thanks man, I appreciate it!
> 0 tourist traps
How do you guarantee it?
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Very nice idea and work!
Thank you, I appreciate it!
Some feedback:
- not providing examples how the app works makes me not inclined at all to download this
- not mentioning anything about being limited to US makes me angry to have wasted my time trying to even try this out
You're right on both counts, and I apologize. The U.S only thing should be visible for visitors to see, not a blockade they hit after trying to install. I also should have mentioned that in the post itself. Updating the site today. On the demo itself, we're currently in the process of creating a short walkthrough video of the app to display on the website alongside the screenshots. Adding it to this week's list. I appreciate the directness.
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