Activity passports encourage Austinites to get out of their comfort zone, into the city

Austinities101 offers passports to get people out of their comfort zone and into the city. Just a stamp away, Austinites101’s passports offer the opportunity to try 12 fitness classes at different studios or 12 beverages at various cafes. Following the passport’s success in Dallas, Dallasities101 brought the passports to Austin this year.

According to the Dallasities101 website, the program originally began with Lily Kramlich-Taylor and Kara Cecala, who, upon moving to Dallas, started documenting their experiences on social media and wanted to encourage others in the area to step out of their comfort zones. After a few months, they began to expand beyond social media, creating connections between businesses and people through events. This idea sparked the creation of the passports in January of 2022.

“The passports were a really cool way to take our recommendations from Instagram and online to actually encourage people to use them in real life as a way to try new places and to kind of use as a bucket list,” said Jenna Waters, the experiential director of Dallasites101.

Waters said they created the fitness passport as a response to many people’s desire to try different fitness studios.

“When trying to find what gym to be a part of, you kind of need to test out different gyms to get a full experience and figure out which one is right for you, so that was kind of the idea behind it,” Waters said. “Then it was super successful, and we realized we can build out a whole passports team and that there’s a need for a lot of different categories.”

Katie Merrill, the passport specialist for Dallasities101, said the company’s teams develop these passports by conducting polls amongst their followers. Merrill said the polls result in ideas such as the company’s current project, a “girl dinner” passport. After polling, Merrill said, the company reaches out to local businesses, and designs, prints and markets the passports on Instagram.

“One of the biggest struggles with small businesses is getting new people in the door,” Waters said. “A lot of times people will redeem their offer but also get a meal or an appetizer so that way the business is still getting more money and new customers they would have never gotten if it wasn’t for these passports.”

Alin Erenshteyn, co-owner of Afuga Coffee, said that the possibility of helping businesses inspired her to participate as a vendor in the Austin coffee passport. With over 20 years of experience with coffee from Israel, Erenshteyn said she and her husband began their business as a mobile coffee bar in San Francisco. She said after COVID-19 caused the business to shut down, they moved their business online and realized they didn’t need to stay in California, eventually moving to Austin after falling in love with the city.

“We did most of it ourselves, and eight months ago we opened,” Erenshteyn said. “We love both coffee and people and what we are doing here we enjoy very much. I think the passports are great. For us, it’s another way to expose us to new clients and for people it’s a great opportunity to try all kinds of coffee shops around town.”