Explorable Places

What Explorable Places does

Explorable Places, operated by Oslo Innovations, L.L.C., is a two-sided web and mobile marketplace that connects educators (teachers, parents, and camp counselors) with cultural partners (museums, parks, historic sites, nature centers, urban farms, and university outreach programs) for field-based learning experiences. The company was founded in 2015 by Meg Davis, a former educator with experience in New Orleans and Brooklyn schools and cultural institutions, and Scott Davis, a software engineer whose prior roles include WeWork and eBay. The platform supports three experience formats: on-site Field Trips, live Virtual Field Trips, and School-Based Programs delivered at the school. Its core product consists of a discovery and booking interface for educators and a Partner Dashboard that allows cultural institutions to list programs, configure group size, duration, dates, and times, and process bookings, communications, and invoicing. A "Vetting and Discovery System" curates participating venues, and the platform integrates with Stripe, PayPal, and Square for payments.

The company monetizes through two streams: tiered Annual Listing Plans for cultural partners priced at $0, $250, $500, $750, or $1,000 per year, and platform transaction fees on booked experiences, where individual program pricing ranges from $1 to $175 per person or group and many programs (especially at public institutions) are free or discounted for Title I schools. Go-to-market combines self-serve product-led discovery with enterprise field sales targeting school districts, individual schools, and cultural institutions, supported by SEO, content marketing, an educator email newsletter, and partner referrals. The platform currently serves educators and cultural partners across NYC, Kansas City, Metro-Denver, Philadelphia, and Boston, with stated intent to scale nationally. Customer evidence indicates the platform reduces field trip booking and registration staff time by more than half for partner organizations.

Explorable Places is a small, founder-controlled private company with 1-10 employees and no disclosed external funding. The company has been operating since 2015 and has built a catalog of "hundreds of cultural partners" primarily through direct sales and community-led growth, with marquee partners including Columbia Engineering, the NYC Department of Environmental Protection, the Queens Museum, Museum of the Moving Image, and CUNY's Advanced Science Research Center. The product has no disclosed AI/ML capabilities, no public API, no mobile app, and no patents or certifications. No acquisitions, leadership changes, or external funding events are recorded in the available material.

Name

Explorable Places

Legal name

Oslo Innovations, L.L.C.

Website

https://explorableplaces.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2015

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

Explorable Places is a two-sided marketplace that connects educators and parents with vetted cultural partners to discover, book, and pay for field trips, virtual field trips, and school-based programs across multiple US metros.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Educational Booking Platform

NAICS

Museums, Historical Sites, and Similar Institutions (712)

SIC

Services-Amusement & Recreation Services (7900), Services-Miscellaneous Amusement & Recreation (7990)

akta.pro primary industry

Tours, Activities & Experiences Booking Platforms (BPAMAIAJ)

akta.pro secondary industries

Destination & Local Services Marketplaces (Transfers, Guides, City Passes) (THALAFAK), Destination/Activity Booking Marketplaces (Tours & Tickets Aggregators) (THAKAAAH)

Keywords

• Field trip booking
• Experiential learning platform
• Educational marketplace
• School program discovery
• Cultural partner directory

Headquarters

HQ city

New York

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B and B2C

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. Partner Listing Subscriptions: Cultural partners pay annual subscription fees ($0-$1000/year) for premium listing plans that maximize visibility of their on-site, off-site, and virtual programs
2. Platform Transaction Fees: The platform facilitates booking of learning experiences, connecting educators with cultural partners through an integrated scheduling and payment system

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion3 records

Distribution channels3 records

Marketing channels5 records

Core offering

Explorable Places operates a two-sided online marketplace that connects educators (teachers, parents, camp counselors) with cultural partners (museums, parks, nature centers, historic sites, universities) for field trips, virtual field trips, and school-based programs. The platform enables vetted discovery, online booking, scheduling, and payment processing, eliminating the fax-and-email back-and-forth traditionally required to arrange field-based learning. Cultural partners subscribe to premium annual listing plans to gain visibility and use a Partner Dashboard to manage bookings, availability, and invoicing.

Product overview

Explorable Places is a unified booking and scheduling platform for experiential learning. The core product consists of a marketplace connecting educators with cultural partners (museums, farms, historic sites, nature centers) for field trips, virtual field trips, and school-based programs. Cultural partners use a Partner Dashboard to list programs, manage availability, and process bookings. The platform supports in-person experiences (Field Trips), remote learning (Virtual Field Trips), and on-site school programs (School-Based Programs). Premium Listing Plans offer paid visibility upgrades for partners at tiered pricing ($0-$1,000/year). The company operates primarily in New York, Kansas City, Metro-Denver, and Philadelphia.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Explorable Places Platform Web-based booking and scheduling platform that connects educators (parents, teachers, camp counselors) with cultural partners (museums, nature centers, farms, historic sites) for field trips, virtual experiences, and educational programs. Enables research, discovery, and booking of experiential learning experiences.
• Partner Dashboard

Quantifiable outcome

• Cuts staff time on field trip registration and tracking by more than half
• +2 more outcomes

Named customers5 records

Segments2 records

Ideal customer profiles2 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration3 records

Feature2 records

Partnerships

Ten partnerships are on record, tiered core.

• NYC Department of Environmental Protection - Newtown Creek Wastewater Resource Recovery FacilitycoreChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorNYC DEP's Office of Education hosts education programs at the Visitor Center, scheduled through Explorable Places. Programs cover NYC's water supply, wastewater treatment, and environmental stewardship for pre-K through graduate students.
• Columbia Engineering Outreach ProgramscoreChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorColumbia University's engineering outreach programs including Inside Engineering, Engineering Speaks, and lab visit programs are listed and bookable through Explorable Places.
• The Queens MuseumcoreChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorCultural institution offering educational programs listed on Explorable Places
• Wyckoff House MuseumcoreChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorNYC's oldest building museum preserving and interpreting cultural and agricultural heritage through educational field trips listed on Explorable Places
• Sugar Hill Children's Museum of Art and StorytellingcoreChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorChildren's museum focused on art and storytelling education, partner on Explorable Places
• Battery Urban FarmcoreChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorEducational urban farm operated by The Battery Conservancy, offering field trips on urban ecology and environmental stewardship through Explorable Places
• Museum of the Moving ImagecoreChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorThe country's only museum dedicated to the art, history, and technology of moving images, offering field trips and media workshops bookable through Explorable Places
• Kemper Museum of Contemporary ArtcoreChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorKansas City's first contemporary art museum, offering docent-led tours and educational programs through Explorable Places
• The Paul Revere HousecoreChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorBoston's oldest preserved home offering historical education programs including storytelling, tours, and outreach programs bookable through Explorable Places
• Advanced Science Research Center - IlluminationSpacecoreChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorCUNY's research facility offering interactive science education programs introducing students to nanoscience, photonics, neuroscience and more through Explorable Places

Scale indicators3 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Emerging players

• Outschool: Outschool is an online marketplace for live small-group classes for kids, with a two-sided model connecting educators and parents. While it focuses on virtual classes rather than in-person cultural experiences, it competes for the same experiential-learning parent/educator budget and demonstrates alternative paths to scaling a children's learning marketplace.

Broad incumbents

• Viator (Tripadvisor): Viator is one of the largest online marketplaces for tours, activities, and attractions, owned by Tripadvisor. It competes for the same activity-booking mindshare as Explorable Places but at a much broader consumer/tourist level, illustrating the incumbent position Explorable Places could eventually challenge in education-specific use cases.
• GetYourGuide: GetYourGuide is a large global marketplace for tours, activities, and experiences with thousands of suppliers and millions of consumers. It represents a scaled version of Explorable Places' marketplace model, though it targets tourists rather than K-12 educators and operates at vastly greater scale and capital intensity.
• Airbnb Experiences: Airbnb Experiences is a global marketplace for bookable activities hosted by local providers, sharing Explorable Places' two-sided marketplace DNA and booking infrastructure. It targets a much broader consumer audience rather than K-12 educators, but represents the scaled experiences-marketplace model Explorable Places is pursuing in a vertical.
• Discovery Education: Discovery Education is a long-established K-12 digital content platform offering streaming video, lesson plans, and virtual field trips to schools nationwide. It overlaps directly with Explorable Places' virtual field trip product and shares the same educator buyer, but operates as broad content/curriculum rather than a marketplace.
• Nearpod: Nearpod provides interactive lessons and virtual reality field trips for K-12 classrooms, with VR-enabled experiences that overlap Explorable Places' virtual field trip offerings. It serves the same educator buyer but as a broader instructional platform rather than a curated marketplace of cultural partners.

Direct peers

• Peek.com: Peek is a booking platform for tours, activities, and experiences with a two-sided marketplace model connecting consumers with experience providers. It shares Explorable Places' core booking infrastructure and supplier-side SaaS approach, though Peek focuses on tourism/leisure rather than education.
• ActivityHero: ActivityHero is a marketplace for kids' activities, camps, and classes serving parents and providers. It mirrors Explorable Places' marketplace model for booking children's experiences, with overlapping use cases around after-school and weekend enrichment, though with a parent-direct rather than educator-led go-to-market.
• KidPass: KidPass is a marketplace for children's activities and classes in major US cities, connecting parents with providers for bookings. Like Explorable Places, it operates as a two-sided marketplace with discovery and booking functionality, though KidPass targets parents directly rather than educators and schools.
• FieldTripZoom: FieldTripZoom offers live virtual field trips to K-12 classrooms, directly overlapping with Explorable Places' virtual field trip product and educator target customer. Both platforms compete for the same teacher budget and experiential learning use case, though FieldTripZoom focuses exclusively on virtual experiences.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat3 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/explorable-places

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles2 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Explorable Places