Offer for guides. How to find a good guide abroad Purchasing an individual or group excursion on the spot

Friends, not long ago I reviewed a Russian-language one. This is a real library of knowledge for everyone who is going on the road! What can I say, the daily traffic of the website tourister.ru is more than 50 thousand people speaks for itself)).

This resource has another very attractive ace up its sleeve, which was launched in the middle of last year. And it's called Experts.Tourister.Ru

Experts.Tourister.Ru is a service search for private guides. It makes it possible to find a Russian-speaking guide for conducting an excursion in an unfamiliar country, a shopping guide for a shopping trip, a translator, etc. - in short, experts in their field of tourism-related services.

In fact, being accompanied by a guide in an unfamiliar country almost always saves a lot of time, effort and even money. It’s one thing to spend time working out the route, studying the sights, then looking for streets on the map, etc., and it’s a completely different thing when a person takes you on the optimal route, tells you everything and shows you everything. Beauty and that's it))

The service has an impressive base of experts: 227 private guides are ready to provide their services in 46 countries! By the way, these figures are increasing every month.

All guides live in the cities where they provide services, so there is no need to worry about their knowledge of the area. Moreover, registering a person in the role private guide on the Experts.Tourister.Ru service is paid, and each application is checked manually by moderators. This is how random people are “screened out” to a large extent.

Each expert has his own personal page on the service. For example, this is what one of them looks like:

On the guide page you will find the following information:

• in which country of the world and cities does it provide services (section “geography of excursions”)
• what services he is ready to provide (section “specializations”)
• detailed description of the excursions and tours (duration, cost, what is included, etc.)
• guide contact details
• guide’s busy calendar, where you can immediately see information about what days he is busy or free

Finding a good and inexpensive guide abroad is not an easy task and is the last stronghold of travel agencies in individual excursion tours. Finding a ticket and number on search engines is cheaper than taking it from an agency; visas are already administered by visa centers. If you know how to make the right trip route, all you have to do is find suitable guides and your exclusive trip is ready.

You can search for a guide in the desired city using the Yandex or Google search engine. But the results will be irrelevant, there will be a lot of garbage and outdated information. It will take a lot of time to sift through the results. You will need to call or wait for a response by mail, for a long time, sometimes to no avail. In the end, all your efforts may be in vain. It is better to use modern guide search services, a review of which is ahead.

If a guide in one of the European languages ​​suits you

www.contexttravel.com. The service offers guided tours with scientists and experts in various fields, including archaeology, art history, cuisine, urban planning, history, and environmental sciences. Docents, as the service calls them, combine their day jobs as scientists and researchers and teach in-depth walking workshops to small groups of intellectually curious travelers. If you want to get an expert perspective on a specific area of ​​knowledge, this is the service for you.

Cons: this service does not offer Russian-speaking guides. The territory is limited to several dozen cities.

Minus: you can’t find Russian-speaking guides here yet.

If you are looking for a Russian-speaking guide or “our resident” abroad

www.localguiding.com. This service also offers contact with a local guide, so you can find the right guide very inexpensively, literally for a few dollars or euros. The service is convenient and well-functioning. Very quickly finds by area and chosen language, immediately offering excursions, cost and prompt communication with the guide. In addition to guides and various excursions, the site offers short tours for several days, hiking, cycling, and so on.

Minus: there are not many Russian-speaking guides, but you can find them. In Europe there are almost no problems.

www.getyourguide.com. This service does not specialize only in guides; in addition to excursions, you can find here: tours, cooking courses, cruises, hop-on hop-off buses and much more. But there are guides too, some setup will be required. First, in the top search line, set the country or city. Then scroll the window a little down and set the language to Russian in the left column. We receive all service options in Russian. Now we go up, in the left column we specify what we need: transfers, excursions, tours or movie tickets.

Cons: the service enters into contracts with companies, not with private guides, so the range includes many multilingual excursions and tours. As a result, either excursions are issued at a higher cost or excursions with headphones.

tourguides.viator.com. Part of the large viator.com service is the search for tours and entertainment; it’s easy to get lost in it. If you only need a guide, tourguides.viator.com makes it quick and easy to find the right person in the right place. The service offers both licensed and unlicensed guides. Searching is very convenient and fast, first enter the direction or city, then the language and you get all the profiles. Some guides offer discounts on their excursions.

Minus: finding a Russian-speaking guide in Asia is difficult.

www.excursiopedia.com Russian-language service created by our compatriots. Convenient, understandable, fast. Allows you to search for excursions and guides at once. It offers other ground service options, sports, adventure, and educational.

Cons: the cost of excursions and services includes the commission of the Internet service itself. In the case of any entertainment attraction, cruise or surf camp, this fee is included in the cost of the service package. But if you only need a guide, it will cost you more.

www.shiroube.com. The service is currently in beta testing mode. In the center of the page we set the language and country. The search engine finds our compatriots working as guides in all parts of the world: in the Canary Islands, Thailand and China. It also sorts guides by gender, age, interests and allows you to contact them through its interface.

Minus: the search engine still works with a slight creak.

www.privateguide.com. More like a bulletin board with contact information for guides. The contact base is decent. There are many guides, and not only in Europe. Here you will find a guide in both Varanasi and Casablanca.

Disadvantage: the service is not perfectly debugged; it does not immediately understand what is needed from it.

When traveling on your own, many consider finding a guide an optional and even unnecessary task, because you can get a map of the city at any hotel, and you can find out the history of the Colosseum on Wikipedia. And guidebooks, after all, have not stopped publishing, now even in the form of applications for smartphones. But a tour is not necessarily the old-fashioned movement from cathedral to museum and from museum to cathedral. A good guide will allow you to correctly prioritize when planning a visit to a city or country, look into places that guidebooks don’t write about, and simply learn more about the place you’re visiting. Editorial incidentally I have tested in my own experience several ways to get on an excursion in Russian and English in an unfamiliar city, and here are our recommendations.

Where can you find a good guide?

• on a free group tour of the city;
• on the Internet on online excursion booking sites;
• on a paid group or individual excursion, which can be purchased directly on the spot.

1. Participation in a free group tour of the city

Almost any city that attracts a more or less stable tourist flow offers free group excursions in local, English and sometimes other languages ​​popular in the region (in case you know them better than English). In some places, pre-registration online is required to participate in them, but often it is enough to come to the right place at the right time, which Google and its colleagues can easily suggest for the query “city” + “free tours”. So, for example, every day at 11 am a man with an orange umbrella will be waiting for you in London at the Churchill monument for a tour of the royal palaces, and every Saturday at 10 am you can join a tour of the New York quarter of Greenwich Village, where they lived, drank and beatniks and rock stars of the 60s created. At the end of the tour, participants are usually asked to independently evaluate the guide’s work and determine the cost of the tour.

In addition to the obvious economic attractiveness, it is also worth noting the high quality of such excursions. As a rule, the guides are really in love with the city and conduct extremely exciting tours. The organizers are also interested in ensuring that free excursions do not disappoint tourists, since such tours are an excellent marketing tool.

The downside of free excursions is the lack of flexibility. If the tour time or route does not suit you, you will have to choose another option for exploring the city. Also, you will not be able to enjoy the excursion if you do not speak English at a fairly high level.

2. Booking an excursion on an online service

Over the past few years, several platforms have emerged that act as intermediaries in finding a guide. When organizing a trip, we recommend studying and comparing the offer in the city you need on several websites. If you are satisfied with a tour in English, you can use international resources:

We will look at the main services focused on finding a Russian-speaking tour guide:

• Experts.Tourist.

The slogan of the Tripster project is: “Unusual excursions from local residents.” In fact, on the site you can find both quite standard sightseeing tours and truly extraordinary offers for travelers who are no longer interested in walking around the main attractions. At the time of publication of the article (June 2015), the site offered more than 2 thousand excursions in 307 cities. Tripster is simple and easy to use. To organize a trip you need:

• select a city;
• choose a tour (tour description and reviews from other travelers are available);
• place an order indicating the date and any additional questions to the guide;
• receive confirmation and answers to questions from the guide;
• Pre-pay 16% of the tour cost.

After confirming the order, it becomes possible to communicate with the guide by phone or email. We also note the availability of special projects and offers. We were especially captivated by the Moscow course “Six meetings on architecture for people who are not used to being interested in it.” There is also a “Travel Community” section, where you can get answers to questions from local residents and other tourists.

Editorial incidentally I used Tripster services on one of my recent trips and was pleased with both the service and the guide. At the time of preparation of the material, the service had only one drawback that we noticed - small coverage.

Experts.Tourist

The “Experts” project is part of the multifunctional resource Tourist, where you can find everything on the topic of travel: from traveler blogs to taxi ordering services from the airport. According to the creators of the service, the “Experts” project allows you to find not only a guide, but also simply “your person in Havana”: a translator, a shopping guide, an expert. According to information on the website as of February 2015, the service offers more than 12.5 thousand excursions in 114 countries. Verification by the editors incidentally in selected areas raises doubts about the realism of these figures. For example, the service says there are 32 excursions in Zagreb, although not a single company or private guide from this city is registered on the site. However, some destinations are indeed represented much better than on Tripster - for example, the countries of Southeast Asia (Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia).

Unlike Tripster, which is aimed primarily at travelers interested in unusual excursions, the Experts.Tourist project is organized to become an attractive promotion tool for travel agencies and private guides. Each guide has his own page, like on a social network, which contains a list of excursions, reviews of other tourists, the guide’s story about himself, contact information, copies of licenses and certificates. Having chosen a direction, the user sees a list of guides and travel companies offering services in a given city, and a short information about each guide: the number of excursions and reviews, knowledge of languages, availability of documents confirming professional suitability. Descriptions of excursions can only be seen after going to the guide page. You can send a message to the guide through the website or contact directly - the contact phone number and email address are usually listed on the guides' pages. The service also allows you not to choose a guide right away, but to place a request for an excursion, indicating the city, date and number of participants.

The advantages of the Experts.Tourist service include a large selection of standard sightseeing tours, a large amount of information about guides, and the ability to immediately contact the guide directly by phone or email.

In our opinion, Experts.Tourist is less attractive for experienced travelers interested in non-standard excursions, but it will definitely not let you get lost in a foreign city.

In addition to these sites, there are several more similar ones with Russian-language excursions: , .

3. Purchasing an individual or group excursion on site

For those who do not like to plan every day of travel in advance, there is always the option of purchasing a tour on the spot. Booklets advertising excursions can almost always be found in hotels and hostels, the main tourist spots in the city. Travel agency offices are often located on the main streets of the city and near attractions. As a rule, you can sign up for a group excursion a day or two in advance. Editorial incidentally Thus, I went on one-day excursions around the city, and to neighboring cities, and even to neighboring countries. Sometimes, with the help of booklets in the hotel, you can find unusual offers - for example, cycling or themed tours. If you refuse to pre-plan excursions, you should consider the following risks:

• a small number of tours in Russian (except for destinations with a large flow of tourists from CIS countries);
• low availability of private tours during the high tourist season due to the large number of preliminary applications;
• an incomprehensible situation with the quality of such tours - the guides are not motivated either by reviews on the Internet or by payment based on the “like it or not like it” principle; In fact, there is no one to ask about quality.

To summarize, we note that none of the options considered is better or worse than the others. Choose the one that is most convenient for you.

Affiliate links:

• Look for non-standard excursions on;
• Book accommodation on Booking;
• Book your tickets on the UIA website;
• Book ready-made tours on;
• Rent bikes on.

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In recent years, startups have been rapidly conquering the travel market: Uber has long been conquering a niche from traditional taxis, and vacation rentals are taking the place of traditional hotels. But that's not all - with the help of online platforms, travelers can easily find a guide among local residents who will willingly introduce the country from the inside. We have selected seven of the most interesting online services and applications.

Tours by Locals

Online platform Tours by Locals over the nine years of its existence, it has managed to unite more than 2,000 guides and cover 159 countries. Only very small areas of shallow lagoons remain undeveloped, for example, Crooked Island, an island that is part of the Bahamas.

Here travelers can either offer their own route to the guide or choose an existing one. For example, for those who prefer quiet and secluded places, the service offers an eight-hour excursion to the picturesque regions of the South Island of New Zealand. The journey begins at Akaroa Cruise Port with a meeting with a local guide. The program includes viewing almost all the picturesque landscapes of the Canterbury region - in eight hours tourists will see the Rakaia Gorge, Lake Coleridge, the Porter Pass mountain pass and Christchurch, the third largest city in New Zealand. In addition to exploring the Southern region, the program also includes a traditional dinner. The country's national cuisine is represented by exotic Maori dishes - fried scorpions and larvae, snails and sheep's eyes.

Also on the online platform there are less intricate routes - for example, excursions to the main attractions of Western Europe. On the website you can book both a group tour and an individual one. Accordingly, the price will depend on the choice - usually it does not exceed $100 per person.

Show Around

The Show Around online platform is considered one of the leading travel startups: the service has gathered more than 80 thousand local residents under its wing and is already available in 204 countries.

Unlike a number of other similar services, Show Around performs only one function - finding a guide. The excursion route is planned after choosing a temporary companion; there are no ready-made options here.

Perhaps the main advantage of the platform is the business cards of local guides. Here you can find literally everything - detailed information about the interests and knowledge of the culture of the region of each registered guide.

A tourist can rate his guide and also write a comment. “This helps guides not to become complacent and creates an environment of healthy competition that motivates people to work at their best,” says Show Around founder Linas Sablowski.

The average price of a tour is about $15 per hour.

Show Around has had an iOS app for a long time, and recently the mobile service became available for Android users.

Shiroube

The approach of the Japanese online service Shiroube is somewhat different from the others - first of all, the tourist selects the section of interest, for example, “Art and History”, “Nature and Adventure”, “Food and Wine”, and only then begins to look for a guide. Using the site is very simple: there is an advanced search that allows you to select the language, age and even gender of the guide. Each guide has his own profile, where tourists can see photos, main interests and offers.

There is no base of ready-made excursions here - the local guide comes up with a personal route for each client. However, the service developers still collect some statistics; for example, the website regularly updates lists with the most common locations and recommendations. So, during a trip to Shanghai, local residents suggest walking along Nanjing Street and trying dumplings - a dish similar to dumplings, but prepared according to an old Chinese recipe.

The service is focused on having fun with visits to nightclubs, various workshops and non-tourist pubs, and the price of an excursion usually does not exceed $400 for a group of four people.

The creators of Embark.org have chosen a narrower niche for themselves - the service is suitable for lovers of active recreation and extreme sports. As the developers note, the platform is more focused on creating a community with one common interest - a passion for active travel. As a result, the creators managed to combine business with pleasure - to unite fans of extreme tourism and give non-professional guides the opportunity to earn money.

This platform is good because it makes it possible to find a person who will organize active recreation for you, even in the center of a big city. For example, together with a guide you can try your hand at rock climbing in the forest of Fontainebleau, the journey to which from Paris will take no more than 40 minutes. Half of all offers are excursions for several days. The service offers such extreme activities as a three-day rafting trip in India, kayak racing in Croatia and an eight-day hike to a peak on the border of Valle d'Aosta and Piedmont in Italy - all in the company of a local guide who knows his stuff.

The site also has a blog where travelers talk about their experiences, which will help you choose from a variety of options what is right for you.

Prices for guide services start at $80 per person for one day.

The Vayable online platform, created just last year, has already earned the attention of The New York Times, CNN and The Wall Street Journal.

The service is focused on the central cities of Western Europe and the UK. The developers approached the project thoroughly: local guides will not only tell you, but also teach you. For example, one of the proposals is a course on photography of Paris at night. The guide will take tourists around the Latin Quarter and the Seine embankment, and also tell them how to take good night portraits.

Rent a Guide

The German startup Rent a Guide offers guide services for all possible types of vacation leisure - from dinner in the best national traditions on the 123rd floor of the Burj Khalifa tower to a hot air balloon flight or a jeep safari in the Arabian deserts. For those who love walking, Rent a Guide will prepare tourist excursions to the capital cities of Western and Eastern Europe.

A hot air balloon ride will cost $300 and a jeep safari will cost $45.

The online housing rental platform Airbnb launched the Trips project relatively recently - last fall. Currently, the service operates in 12 cities and offers more than 500 excursions. The startup is more focused on entertainment that local residents can talk about. For example, you can visit a violin workshop in Paris, drive vintage cars, and even take part in a marathon in Kenya.

“We want to bring back the element of magic to travel, with people at the center,” said company CEO Brian Chesky.

In addition, here you can try your hand at charity and take part in socially significant events, such as helping stray dogs and a master class on creating art from garbage.

Unlike other online platforms, Trips has a very functional application, so with the help of Airbnb and its new service, you can literally plan a trip from start to finish.

A guide to travel and entertainment in Russian cities, with which you can create a route, find interesting attractions, choose a hotel, restaurant, fitness club or climbing wall. The application includes original city guides from famous artists, chefs, athletes, designers, journalists, and bloggers. For example, a guide to the best Asian restaurants in the city, a one-day excursion route, or a selection of places to go longboarding.

There are currently 29 cities on the site. In the near future, the developers plan to add all the cities of the Golden Ring of Russia.

2.Altourism

Project in the field of social entrepreneurship. Travel to the Russian outback, which the service offers, is a mixture of accommodation with social activity, as well as the opportunity to plunge into the life of the local population, supporting them in initiatives that help the development of their home village or small town.

Now the site offers, for example, help to restore a 17th-century chapel, organize a holiday for children in the Kaluga region, or contribute to the improvement of the city of Tutaev (Yaroslavl region).

3. RussiaDiscovery

The company organizes unusual holidays throughout the country. For example, with their help you can go to look at the northern lights or go to a corporate event in Lake Baikal or Adygea. Tours can be sorted by region or activity (sightseeing tour, jeep tour, snowmobile safari, mountain climbing, and so on).

4. WikiPlanet

An aggregator of “package” tours around Russia (there are more than 5,000 offers on the website) with the possibility of instant booking and its own room manager - this is instantly updated information on all available offers. Focused on Russian hotels, holiday homes, boarding houses.

As the creators assure, they strive to simplify the process of buying travel packages - in order to go on a trip, “you only need to know the voucher number and have an identification document with you.”

5. Travelata

This “online hypermarket” offers package tours not only in Russia, but more and more Russian resorts are appearing on the site, and there is also a separate page with excursion tours around the country. In 2014, Travelata raised $7 million from MCI Management and EBRD, the funds were also used for expansion into the regions.

6.Excursiopedia

Service for ordering excursions. There are both international and domestic destinations - from Vladivostok to Kaliningrad. Payment occurs after confirmation of the event by the guide, everything can be done online, and on the excursion you only need to have a printed voucher with you.

7. TourBazaar

Online auction of tours. Lots in TourBazaar are package offers of holiday homes, boarding houses and country hotels. There are many proposals for Russia. Rumor has it that a trip can be bought for a ruble.

8.

A little over a year ago, the Tutu.ru service launched a new service – selling tours online. Proposals for Russia.

The main services that the service provides are the purchase of air and railway tickets, updated transport schedules. For example, train schedules are offered for 17 cities.

9.VIVAster

A platform for ordering excursions around the world, in Russia there are a little more than 500 options. Recommendations and booking of group tours are available.

Book accommodation

Car rental in Russian cities. The model is P2P car sharing, when a private individual can rent out his car. True, a little more than five hundred cars have been registered so far, which is not enough on a national scale.

14.TopTripTip

This is a guide to the regions of Russia with offline access. Contains information about attractions and infrastructure, tourist routes, a calendar of significant events and activities with a reminder function, audio tours, photo galleries, and a recommendation service. Two language versions of the content are available (Russian and English; for Moscow and St. Petersburg there is also a Chinese interface). The database of objects, events and routes is being updated.

15. Yell.ru

Yell, according to the developers, already contains 1 million reviews of 2 million companies throughout Russia.

16.Mere

An application that compiles a list of “tasks” for walking and monitors their completion. St. Petersburg and Suzdal are accessible from Russian cities.

17. Country

Guide to Russia. Contains the history of cities, posters, ratings. The “Travel Master” service is available, where you can select the tour or excursion you are interested in and leave a request. For those who are searching, here is a rating of cities and places in Russia where you can plan a trip.