Destination partnerships
Build a region, not an ad.
Human-verified places. Real itineraries. Original storytelling that helps visitors go beyond the headline and into your communities.
Start a destination conversationFor Businesses & Destinations · Tennessee
Help people experience your place, not just find it.
XPLR GUIDE is a curated guide, not a listings directory. People open it when they've already decided to go somewhere, and trust it because every place in it was visited by a human on our team. Getting in starts with a conversation, and the standard is the same for everyone.
500K+ followers across XPLR
Nearly 20,000 people guided in person by Stuart Deming
100% of places in the guide visited by a human on the XPLR team
Suggest a place
Get discovered.Know a place worth knowing about, yours or someone else's? Tell us what makes it worth the trip.
recs@xplrguide.com ↗Request consideration
Be reviewed like everyone else.Ask the team to consider your business for the guide. A Navigator visit and our standard assessment decide. Submissions start the process, they don't skip it.
partner@xplrguide.com ↗Clear the standard
Be in the guide.The full in-person assessment against the XPLR standard. Places that clear it are in the guide and are XPLR GUIDE Approved, with strength labels drawn from the assessment and our own video of the place. Requesting an evaluation carries a fee that covers the visit. It is paid before we go, and it is not refunded if the place doesn't clear the standard, because the fee buys the visit, never the verdict.
partner@xplrguide.com ↗Read The Standard →Destination partnerships
Build a region, not an ad.Tourism organizations and destinations work with XPLR to verify places in person, build lists and itineraries people actually follow, and create the content that moves visitors from inspiration into your communities. This is the SETTA model: human-verified places, real itineraries, and aggregate insight into how visitors explore, shared as patterns and counts, never as anyone's personal information.
partner@xplrguide.com ↗Sponsorship
Get seen, clearly labeled.A limited number of sponsorship placements are available to partners that have already passed our in-person vetting: front-page and video-page placements, and labeled sponsor moments inside itinerary videos and photo galleries. Every sponsored placement carries the 'Sponsored' label on its face, is visually distinct, and is never presented as a ranking or a recommendation. Sponsors get placement. They never get a say in what we recommend.
partner@xplrguide.com ↗THE RULES, UP FRONT / 02
How paid relationships work here, stated plainly.
- 01
Payment never buys inclusion in the guide. If a place is in the app, it passed the same in-person assessment as everyone else.
- 02
Payment never buys editorial placement in a curated list or itinerary, and never affects search results, rankings, or what we recommend.
- 03
Payment never buys XPLR GUIDE Approved status. A business pays for an evaluation visit, and the visit can still end in a no.
- 04
Sponsored placements live only in designated sponsored slots and always carry the 'Sponsored' label, including inside itinerary videos and galleries.
- 05
XPLR keeps creative control of XPLR content. Partners can flag factual errors. That's it.
Being great at what you do is the first step.
Every pathway starts the same way: a real conversation with a real person on our team. Tell us about your place.
Start a conversation