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"Who knows your neighborhood best? \nThink about it. One key to diving into a new destination is access to the lesser-knowns and unknowns \u2014 the spots most tourists miss. \nIf you're with an insider \u2014 someone who knows a place like back of his or her hand \u2014 then you're in the game for a great slice, or to find the bars that can boast the most mind-bending mixologists, and maybe also for the little corners of quirk and historical curiosity that the rest of the crowd won't find. \nStray Boots thinks they can give everyone a lead on just that kind of advantage \u2014 right from the screen of their smartphones.\nThe app-maker's platform  \u2014 a blend of virtual tour guide and scavenger hunt \u2014 offers immersive experiences of destinations that anyone can purchase, download and follow. And now, opening the publishing side to user-built tours, the newest idea is that Stray Boots' experiences will start with locals and aficionados who truly know their blocks best. \n\"Anybody can create a tour and submit it to be published,\" said Avi Millman, co-founder of the company. And here's a kicker: the creators of the tours get to share in the profits with Stray Boots \u2014 a fifty-fifty split on every sale.\nThat being said, Millman and company want to keep tight rein on the quality of the product they produce. \n\"We're still maintaining editorial control, so there's no way that somebody could just publish a tour live to our site,\" he explained.\nSee also: The Top 10 U.S. Summer Travel Destinations for 2014\nBecause Stray Boots knows it's competing against professionals in the destination and tours space that have had years to get their in-person-guide business models down cold.  \n\"If you talk about the travel market, we're competing with the tour guides,\" Millman said. \"To me, this is about convincing people to step away from the old way of doing things. You can actually have a fun and flexible way to walk around, to discover and learn\" with your friends or on your own.\nThe Stray Boots journey: from SMS to meatballs\nStray Boots' roots reach back to text messaging. Its initial iteration, circa 2009, was also about destinations and discovery, but the \"guide\" came in the form of SMS content. In 2012, the idea transformed, and with $2 million in Series A funding, the company reinvented its service as an Android and iOS mobile suite.\nWhile Google has delved into the same realm a bit, with Field Trip, and Citymaps allowing you to drop info markers on sharable maps, the Stray Boots project isn't about info-cards popping up as you move around or a static presentation of locations that you can touch to read about. It's a curated, guided, sequential-stop process that leads you into and through a set of destinations \u2014 sometimes with a themed approach. \nTake the platform's Meatball Shop Lower East Side tour, for example. \nThe owners of the well known New York chain The Meatball Shop partnered with Stray Boots to bring travelers to their version of the Lower East Side. It's a neighborhood for which the restaurateurs profess a deep love.\n\"I've been working and living in and around the area for 20 years,\" said co-owner and general manager Mike Chernow, regarding his decision to build an LES Stray Boots tour with his business partner and executive chef, Daniel Holzman. \"I kind of know every single street, and store, and destination down here. So, I just sort of closed my eyes and walked around the area, making note of places where I would stop in.\"\nSee also: Lego Travellers Build Memories With Creative Vacation Photos\nWhen you opt into the Meatball Shop tour, a $5 purchase at Stray Boots, it starts you at the Doughnut Plant \u2014 telling you that there will be 16 challenges and 200 points to garner across the tour, and that you're going to be hitting the sidewalk for 2\u20133 hours.\nAs your guides Chernow and Holzman advise a cup of java and a sunflower seed donut at the Doughnut Plant, they also give you a quiz prompt: They were the very first to invent what kind of doughnut? Get the info in the shop \u2014 along with your goodies \u2014 and score points (the app offers hints if you want them).\nThe map then takes you along Grand Street and sends you down Orchard to menswear boutique By Robert James. And the challenges continue, and you try to rack up points. Eventually, you'll stop at museums, and sweets counters \u2014 and, yes, The Meatball Shop.  \nWhat's the line between tour and game, according to Millman?\n\"Every single experience on Stray Boots is going to teach you about where you're going, and we think that fundamentally makes it a tour,\" he said. \"But if you were to go on a more basic scavenger hunt, I don't think you'd find yourself experiencing a city like this.\"\nIf it works, Stray Boots gives visitors and locals the best of both worlds. \nNot just content: user-generated experiences\n\nImage:  Stray BootsIn a sense, opening its platform to the public is Stray Boots taking a cue from a process with which travel has long engaged: user-generated content. But their app allows users to create not just content \u2014 reviews of destinations for others to read \u2014 but whole experiences.\nIt's a concept that others have tried to make work, in one form or another, and found frustrating. However, at least one travel expert thinks there's still space for an ambitious contender to make mobile-fueled self-guided tours a demand-level commodity for travelers and weekend explorers.\n\"If Stray Boots can harness the entrepreneurial spirit of great walking-tour experiences and make them more scalable and experience-able, then that would be a win for everyone,\" says Cree Lawson, travel media analyst and entrepreneur. \"My gut says this is a \u2026 replacement for the successful tour that's always overbooked. But it's kind of like dubbing a record \u2026 the recording quality has to be profound in order to capture half the value of the original [experience].\"\nAnd that pursuit of quality, as of this month, is now a group effort for Stray Boots \u2014 one in which the startup is engaging its users to earn a victory for visitors everywhere."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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