Most navigation apps are built to answer this one question: what is the fastest way to get from point A to point B?
But for travelers, the best route is not always the fastest one.
Sometimes, the better route is the scenic road through the mountains. The historic street with a story hidden behind each storefront. The coastal drive with a viewpoint worth pulling over for. The neighborhood walk that gives visitors time to stop for lunch, wander through a museum, or linger somewhere unexpected before continuing.
Drives & Detours is a self-guided tour app offering walking and driving tours across the United States. Drives & Detours turns a traveler’s phone into a personal audio guide without fixed schedules, crowded groups, or the cost of a traditional guided tour.
Paul Behnke is the founder and Head of Product at Drives & Detours. His original idea came from something simple: weekend drives with friends.
“Several years ago, I worked for a robotics company, and a bunch of us used to get together on weekends to go for drives in the mountains and meet up for lunch afterward,” Paul said. “I usually ended up organizing the route because I knew San Diego's backroads pretty well and I love maps.”
Those drives sparked a larger realization. Google Maps could help people get somewhere efficiently, but it was not designed to help them find the most scenic roads, the most enjoyable routes, or the places worth discovering along the way.
“Google Maps is great for getting from A to B, but it’s not really built for finding the most scenic route, or the most fun twisty roads to drive in sports cars,” Paul said. “I thought there might be something there.”
At first, Drives & Detours was shaped around that idea: helping car enthusiasts find better roads. Paul built early prototypes and shared them with car clubs he belonged to at the time. The feedback was encouraging, but it also revealed something important.
“The feedback was helpful and people saw some value in it, but that feature by itself wasn’t enough to build a business around,” Paul said.
The bigger opportunity wasn’t the route itself. It was everything travelers could discover along the way.
“The bigger realization was that we could broaden the market beyond car enthusiasts by adding more value along the way,” Paul said. “For example, what’s coming up, what’s worth stopping for, what to skip, and the stories behind the places you’re passing.”
That shift changed the direction of the company. Drives & Detours evolved from a scenic routing concept into a storytelling platform for travelers who want to explore more freely.
“That pushed the idea toward storytelling and audio tours, which is eventually how I found my way to STQRY,” Paul said.
Ditch the Group. Keep the Guide.
With no fixed schedules or groups to keep pace with, travelers are free to experience a destination on their own terms. Location-activated audio automatically plays stories as users move along a route, whether they are walking through a historic neighborhood or driving through a national park.
For Paul, this flexibility addressed a gap in both driving and walking tours.
“Traditional guided tours can be great, but they’re often tied to high-traffic areas and set schedules,” he said. “We wanted to offer something more flexible and affordable, while also enabling people to explore lesser-known places and stories that traditional tours can’t always reach.”
That freedom has become central to the Drives & Detours experience. Travelers can start when they want, stop for a meal, visit a museum, take photos, or linger somewhere unexpected before continuing the tour when they are ready.
Since launching, Paul said one of the most surprising insights has been “how much people value flexibility.”
“We knew it would matter, but it’s always great to hear someone talk about how they were able to stop for lunch or check out a museum and continue the tour afterwards,” he said.
Traveler feedback reinforces that idea. One reviewer called the app “genius” and praised the historical information included in the narration. Another described a Coronado tour as “interesting and very informative” and appreciated that the experience “lets you wander a site as long as you want.” A third called their walking tour “affordable and perfect,” as well as “informative and clear.”
Together, those experiences reflect the idea at the heart of Drives & Detours: travelers get the freedom to explore independently without giving up the stories, context, and local insights that make a destination worth discovering.
Building a Nationwide Library of Self-Guided Tours
What began as a regional idea has grown into a nationwide library of more than 65 self-produced walking and driving tours across dozens of destinations.
_"We’ve grown from a small regional catalog supporting local partners into a national library of 65+ self-produced walking and driving tours across dozens of destinations,” _ Paul said. “It’s been a long journey but we’re encouraged by more consistent traction we’re starting to see.”
Today, Drives & Detours takes travelers through cities, historic districts, scenic regions, and national parks across the United States, from San Diego and San Francisco to Boston, New Orleans, Joshua Tree, and Yellowstone National Park.
The catalog spans walking and driving tours focused on history, music, pop culture, local legends, architecture, scenic routes, coastal destinations, and national park landscapes.
But growing from a small regional catalog into a nationwide library presents an important challenge: how do you create a consistent experience across dozens of destinations without making every tour feel the same?
For Drives & Detours, the answer is a repeatable editorial and production process that prioritizes the traveler experience while leaving room for the character of each destination to shape the tour.
“We’ve made a conscious effort to build a repeatable editorial and production process, but every destination still starts with the traveler experience, what route makes sense, and what stories we want to tell,” Paul said. “We give ourselves room to adjust the voice for the destination or specific theme, but we try to keep an overall consistent and familiar experience across every tour.”
That balance allows travelers to become familiar with the Drives & Detours experience while ensuring the destinations themselves remain at the center of each tour.
New tour ideas often begin with firsthand experience.
“A lot of times it starts with a place I’ve been myself, or somewhere someone on the team has been to or is planning to visit,” Paul said. “But in general, we look for places with strong visitor demand, compelling stories, and a route that works well as a self-guided experience.”
Those three considerations — demand, story, and route — help determine where Drives & Detours goes next. The destination needs to attract travelers, offer stories worth discovering, and provide a journey that works naturally without a live guide.
It’s a process that has helped Drives & Detours turn a regional concept into a growing national catalog while keeping the traveler experience at the center of every new tour.
Image from Drives & Detours
Where Route Guidance Meets Storytelling
Each Drives & Detours tour has two jobs.
- It needs to guide the traveler physically.
- And it needs to carry them through a story.
That is where STQRY’s location-based technology becomes essential.
The experience depends on audio arriving at the right moment, maps supporting the route clearly, and the app continuing to work even when travelers are in areas with limited connectivity.
“Each tour needs to function as both a story and practical route guidance,” Paul said. “The traveler needs to know where to go and what to look at, but the story should also build naturally.”
For Drives & Detours, thoughtful pacing is essential. The audio needs to arrive at the right moment, travelers need to understand what they are looking at, and each point of interest needs to contribute something worthwhile to the experience.
“So we try to structure each tour so the audio arrives at the right moment, the user knows what to look for, and the stop or POI feels worthwhile,” Paul said.
This is what transforms a route into an experience. A traveler is not just following directions. They are discovering why a place matters as they move through it.
That approach is visible in Drives & Detours’ tour bundles and destination collections. In California, travelers can choose the Hollywood & Beverly Hills Walking Tour Combo Pack, which combines stories of Hollywood Boulevard’s movie palaces, filming locations, and star-studded landmarks with the glamour and history of Beverly Hills. The Ultimate San Diego collection includes 18 self-guided walking and driving tours across coastal drives, seaside strolls, historic districts, hidden gems, and day-trip destinations like Julian and Borrego Springs. The Essential San Diego bundle brings together five must-see walking tours through Old Town, Balboa Park, the Gaslamp Quarter, the Embarcadero, and La Jolla.
In New England, Drives & Detours offers collections like the Nantucket Essentials Combo and the Discover New England seven-tour collection, which includes Boston’s Freedom Trail, Salem, Newport, Portland, Nantucket, and Martha’s Vineyard.
These bundles show how a single self-guided tour can become part of a larger destination experience.
Building on a Reliable Foundation with STQRY
As Drives & Detours grew, Paul needed a reliable platform that could support the technology behind a growing library of location-based tours.
That meant reliable GPS-triggered audio, maps, offline functionality, content tools, and the ability to manage a growing library of tours without building every piece of infrastructure from scratch.
“STQRY gave us a reliable platform to build on without having to create all of the tour infrastructure ourselves,” Paul said. “The GPS-triggered audio, offline functionality, map experience, and content tools all just work.”
For a company like Drives & Detours, that reliability is not a small detail. It is what allows the team to focus on storytelling, production, partnerships, and growth rather than maintaining custom technical systems.
The STQRY platform also gives Drives & Detours the flexibility to support multiple types of experiences. The app includes both driving and walking tours. It is available on iOS, Android, and web. Content can be organized into individual tours, destination bundles, and larger collections. Location-triggered audio can guide travelers through cities, parks, scenic routes, and historic neighborhoods.
And when questions come up, Paul said STQRY’s support has been an important part of the relationship.
“The STQRY support team has been super responsive whenever questions or issues come up,” he said.
For Paul, the biggest benefit is the combination of technical reliability and human support.
“Absolutely,” Paul said when asked whether he would recommend STQRY to others. “Especially for small businesses and organizations that want to create a location-based audio experience without having to build the entire technical platform from scratch. The biggest benefit for us has been having a reliable foundation for GPS-triggered audio, maps, offline access, and content management, backed by a responsive team when questions or issues come up.”
Image from Drives & Detours
Making Travel More Accessible, Affordable, and Immersive
Drives & Detours is also thinking about accessibility and reach.
The app is available in multiple languages, including English, Chinese, German, French, and Spanish. For a travel product, Paul sees multilingual support as a strategic necessity.
“It’s still early, but multilingual support is important strategically,” he said. “Travel is inherently international, and we want the experience to be accessible to more visitors over time.”
The company has already received positive feedback from international users, reinforcing the importance of building for a broader audience.
“We’ve already had positive feedback from international users, so it feels like an important part of where the product needs to go,” Paul said.
That same thinking applies to affordability. Traditional guided tours can be valuable, but they are not always accessible to every traveler, especially families, budget-conscious visitors, or people who prefer to explore privately. Drives & Detours gives travelers a lower-cost option while still providing high-quality storytelling and local insight.
As the company puts it, its tours are designed to make travel “more accessible, more affordable, and more explorable.”
Monetizing Self-Guided Travel
Beyond the visitor experience, Drives & Detours also offers a useful example of how digital tours can become a scalable business model.
Paul said the company has tested several approaches to monetization.
“We’ve actually experimented with several different models, including individual tours, bundles, and partnerships,” he said.
Individual tours are easy for travelers to understand. They can find a destination, purchase the tour, and start exploring.
But bundles have become especially valuable.
“Individual tours are straightforward, but bundles are proving especially useful because they give travelers more value and make it easier to package a destination or experience in a way that feels complete,” Paul said.
Instead of offering one isolated tour, Drives & Detours can package a broader experience around a city, region, or theme. A traveler visiting San Diego can choose a single walking tour or unlock a full collection. Someone planning a New England trip can purchase multiple experiences together. Bundles help increase value for the traveler while giving Drives & Detours a way to organize and market its growing library more effectively.
Partnerships are another important part of the company’s growth strategy.
“Partnerships are also important because they help us reach travelers in the places where they are already making decisions about what to do,” Paul said.
That opens the door for collaboration with destinations, attractions, publishers, creators, and local organizations. Drives & Detours invites partners to co-create content, offer tours to their audiences, cross-promote experiences, or explore custom partnerships.
For tourism organizations and local partners, the model is compelling: self-guided audio experiences can extend storytelling beyond operating hours, reach independent travelers, and make lesser-known places easier to discover.
When a Tour Becomes a Memory
The most meaningful feedback often comes when travelers see the tour as a core part of their trip.
Paul recalled one story in particular.
“The one that comes to mind is a woman who rented a red jeep and took our Journey into Joshua Tree tour,” he said. “She loved it so much that she emailed us a photo afterwards and raved about the whole experience.”
For Paul, that kind of feedback shows the experience became personal.
“Those kinds of messages are always great because they show that the tour became part of a real memory, not just something someone listened to in the background,” he said.
That is the deeper promise of self-guided storytelling. The app helps travelers notice more, understand more, and remember more.
A scenic drive becomes more than a drive. A walk through a historic district becomes more than sightseeing. A stop along the road becomes a story the traveler carries home.
What’s Next for Drives & Detours
Looking ahead, Drives & Detours plans to continue expanding its tour library and improving the traveler experience.
“We plan to continue growing the tour library and improving the overall experience for travelers with more content and potentially new features within our existing tours,” Paul said.
The team is especially interested in personalization.
“We’re interested in making tours more personalized and adaptive, so the experience can better respond to each traveler’s interests, schedule, and pace,” he said.
That direction feels like a natural evolution for a company built around flexibility. If the first version of self-guided travel allowed people to explore on their own schedules, the next version could make those experiences even more responsive to what each traveler wants from a trip.
For Drives & Detours, the road ahead is about scale, personalization, and deeper discovery.
And it all traces back to the idea that the best journeys are not always the fastest ones.
What started as one person organizing weekend drives through San Diego’s backroads has grown into a nationwide library of 65+ walking and driving tours across dozens of destinations. With STQRY as its technology foundation, Drives & Detours has been able to focus on what it does best: finding great routes, uncovering overlooked stories, and helping travelers explore more freely and deeply.
For tour operators, creators, destinations, and organizations with stories to share, Drives & Detours shows what is possible when flexible storytelling meets reliable location-based technology.
One great route can become a tour. One tour can become a catalog. And one local idea can grow far beyond its starting point.
Ready to Bring Your Stories to Life?
Have an idea for a tour or digital experience? See what you can create with STQRY. Book a free demo today and discover how easy it can be to turn your stories into experiences worth exploring.
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