Citydoping NYC is a tour guide app that helps visitors feel like a local in New York City. Originally built for business travelers with a free lunch break between meetings or down time for a drink, it points out low-key venues suggested by local New Yorkers.

SkiftTake: With a specific type of tourist in mind, CityDoping is able to include audience-appropriate listings thus increasing its chances of helping users find exactly what they're looking for.

PathWrangler is a central one-stop organization tool for outdoor adventure trip providers and bookers. It helps build trip itineraries and gear lists, manages ongoing chats and email chains, and creates trip presentations.

SkiftTake: PathWrangler succeeds in making its tool both fun and useful for groups, although it could arguably be used for less adventurous trips as well. We're impressed to find a startup that sticks to what it will ll be good at -- private trip planning -- without trying to turn it into a social roadshow.

Varkala creates tours executed completely through its iOS app. Travelers select a neighborhood-specific tour and text the "tour operator," or neighborhood local, for details on their favorite places. Tour operators also curate short lists of their top recommendations for travelers to view without ever talking to one another.

SkiftTake: This form of a tour guide is so impersonal and to the point that it might just work in our day of digital connections. Tour providers are likely to sign up with little commitment other than a few texts needed to complete a tour and travelers are able to maintain independence without wondering where to eat next.

The Go Generation is a review and booking platform for small, independent adventure tour operators. Travelers without blogs can use it as a platform to document and share their travels while tour operators use to showcase detailed trip reviews. Using the same technique as OkCupid, the startup asks users random questions during their search to get a better feel for the individual and eventually stops offering experiences that aren't relative to the user.

SkiftTake: If the Go Generation reaches a critical mass of users, its real value will kick in by providing tour operators with exact metrics on how many searches and websites users go through before a transaction.

Rooomr partners with Virgin Unite and Virgin Mobile USA’s The RE*Generation initiative to donate 5 percent of every booking -- at least $5 per booking -- to the organization that works with homeless teens.

SkiftTake: Rooomr isn't pushing its altruistic initiative for nothing; it's running with a finding that millennials are more attracted to companies with a charitable component over ones without one. It's best chance at success will be via festival partnerships and going viral among a certain set of conscious, connected partygoers.

TripTease is built on the idea that travel reviews are outdated and should focus on photos rather than text. Part review site, part social site, the startup officially launched last week at San Francisco's Launch Festival where it won the "Best Design" award. Users build profiles, like each other's reviews, share them on social media, and click through to book their own trip. A team of editors select which properties make it on the site.

SkiftTake: If you can get past the false premise of the startup's pitch, TripTease is indeed an extremely pretty website. But like other user-driven travel sites, it must work hard to gain a big enough pool of users for it to matter.