Blind and visually impaired (BVI) individuals face significant challenges when navigating unfamiliar environments, including difficulties with spatial orientation, and accessing and interpreting wayfinding cues like signage or information displays, often requiring them to rely on sighted guides for navigation. Sighted users, too, can struggle to navigate complex indoor environments, particularly when faced with poorly marked signs or maps, unfamiliar signage conventions, or disorienting spatial layouts. There is also a notable lack of wayfinding systems that allow users to navigate seamlessly between indoor and outdoor spaces. This often results in users—both BVI and sighted—taking unnecessarily complex routes instead of the most efficient paths to their destinations. To address these challenges, this work introduces an inclusive wayfinding system, accessible via a smartphone, designed to assist both BVI users and individuals without visual impairments in navigating the shortest route to their destinations. The system uses an indoor module that leverages Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons and an outdoor module powered by GPS, with transition beacons ensuring seamless navigation between indoor and outdoor spaces. Many existing indoor navigation systems focused on turn-by-turn guidance fail to deliver meaningful spatial information that enables BVI users to develop a mental map of the space. Indoor maps designed for BVI users often fail to provide a complete understanding of the layout, and users may not have access to these maps before visiting the space. To empower BVI users in independently exploring and cognitively mapping unfamiliar indoor spaces, this work introduces two strategies for spatial knowledge acquisition: pre-visit exploration, where users familiarize themselves with a space using a mobile application featuring grid-based route and layout maps, and in-situ exploration, which uses the beacon-based indoor navigation system to help users understand the space during navigation. By integrating these exploration techniques into wayfinding systems and map applications, smartphones are transformed into powerful cognitive mapping tools that enhance spatial awareness, mobility, autonomy, and confidence for BVI users in navigating complex indoor environments.