The yellow brick road to potential success couldn’t be paved with better potential than the opportunities Raleigh startup YILLIO is seeking to cash in on.

From the Super Bowl to the back-to-back U.S. Open golf tournaments in Pinehurst, the mobile location app is looking to generate its own share of tourism dollars by helping visitors find local restaurants and merchants.

During the U.S. Men’s and Women’s Open Championships starting next week and running back-to-back, some 400,000 people are expected to travel to the Pinehurst area.

To help them find local merchants, the Pinehurst-Southern Pines-Aberdeen Area Convention & Visitors Bureau struck a deal with YILLO.

The app, which runs on iPhones and Android devices and is free to download, provides directions as well as restaurant and other merchant locations. YILLIO struck a similar deal with the Greater Newark Convention and Visitors Bureau for Super Bowl week.

“We consider this a partnership although they have provided some funding to list and advertise locations in the Pinehurst area,” YILLIO CEO Reid Overcash says.

To make money, however, YILLIO is counting on visitors to find their app, use it, and then click on restaurants and merchants who are participating. They get listings free, by the way.

“The eventual monetization plan is for business to be on our list of merchant locations for no charge,” Overcash explains. “If they opt for creating an ad or promotion we will charge them on a pay-per-click (PPC) basis. In some cases we are working with large chains where we may take a monthly fee rather than a PPC.”

In announcing the agreement, PPC’s Chief Executive Officer Caleb Miles touted YILLIO.

“Golf fans around North Carolina and the country all recognize this as a once in a lifetime opportunity to be a part of this unique golf experience,” he said. “Over 400,000 golf enthusiast will be attending but most will use lodging outside of our local area, travelling to and from the championships over the 14-day period. Using YILLIO, spectators will be able to search ahead along their routes to find local restaurants, retail, gas and even available golf tee times.”

In other words, the PPC to spend a lot more time eating and shopping, not just being spectators.

The Pinehurst regional deal is the latest benchmark of growth for YILLIO, and Overcash is hoping there is enough lead time to get the word out to Open visitors about what the startup is offering.

“We were able to get the app introduced to the market but was not able to promote to users ourselves to any great extent,” Overcash recalled about the Super Bowl.

“Nevertheless we had about 2000 downloads and several hundred usages of the app.

“One very useful metric that came out of the Newark experience was that 49 percent of the people using the app made a phone call to the restaurant, presumably to inquire about a reservation. Overall, the people we worked with in Newark were very pleased with how it all ended.”

Now that is quite a follow-up rate, given the very low average percentages of click-throughs for promotions.

Investors, too, are hearing about YILLIO.

“We have raised $500,000 to date with $100,000 left to go in this round,” Overcash says. “We plan to begin another larger round very soon that would allow us to add staff and begin a more concentrated drive to gain users.”

If they cash in on the Opens, the investors are likely to hear about that, too.