Who offers free tours online? An insider's look at the industry

Who offers free tours online? An insider's look at the industry

What types of platforms and agencies offer free tours online? An insider's look at the industry

Nowadays, if one looks for a free tour online, the offer seems endless. A quick Google search is enough to find dozens of options. But behind this apparent variety, there are different types of actors operating in this sector, each with their particularities, advantages and limitations. In this article we want to share, from our experience, a small guide to understand who is who in the world of online free tours.


booking calendar

1. The big international platforms

Here we are talking about names like GuruWalk, Civitatis or Freetour .com.

They are consolidated platforms, with global presence and thousands of tours in dozens of countries. Their role has been fundamental in professionalizing the sector and providing visibility to many guides and small agencies that otherwise would not have had access to such a wide audience.

We ourselves work with these platforms and receive travelers who have booked through them on a daily basis. Their ability to reach millions of people and their technological structure are impressive. In addition, many of these platforms have improved their rating, selection and support systems for local guides in recent years.


2. Independent projects with a local and thematic focus (like us).

Mateu doing tour in Bologna](/content/img/city/bolognagrupo2.webp/#img-blog-float-sx)

Then there are those who, like us, have opted for a more independent and specialized structure. Our proposal is based on the deep knowledge of each city, on the direct relationship with the guides and on the design of more personal, thematic and adaptable experiences.

Thanks to this approach, we can offer unique tours, develop our own products such as The 7 Secrets, and accompany the traveler more closely, even beyond the tour: with recommendations, assistance or personalized services.

Working this way is not the easiest or the fastest, but it makes the most sense to us. Because every guide we work with, every route we design and every story we tell is born from a real connection with the city.


3. Micro-agencies and independent guides

Another very common player in the free tour ecosystem are the small local agencies or guides that operate individually. They usually offer tours in a single city and, in many cases, rely almost exclusively on large platforms for visibility.

That's how we started out too. And we know perfectly well how difficult it is to break through, to get bookings, to manage groups with hardly any resources or promotional tools. That's why we highly value the efforts of those who bet on offering quality from the bottom up, with passion and authenticity.


The wholesale resellers... those who resell without knowing what they are selling.

And then there are them. The ones who sincerely motivated us to write this article: the tour resellers. We are not talking about local agencies, nor about serious platforms, but about intermediaries who dedicate themselves to sell the same tours already published on the big platforms, with copy and paste descriptions, without ever having set foot in the city or met the guides.

These websites or companies earn micro-commissions without providing any added value. On their pages, they promise "the best hand-selected tours", when in reality they have no idea what they are offering. They have no contact with the organizers, no contact with the guides, no contact with the city. And yet, they present themselves as experts.

This kind of practices, besides generating confusion, harm both travelers and those of us who work with responsibility and proximity in each destination.


Why do we position ourselves differently?

Because we were born from the local, from the field. Because we know our guides, we design the tours from scratch and we accompany travelers directly. Because we do not believe in copy-paste, but in building something with its own identity.

Our project does not simply seek volume or visibility: we seek to create memorable experiences that connect people with the cities and their stories. And that, frankly, is not achieved with automatic commissions or recommendation algorithms.


Have you already done a free tour with us? Then you know what we are talking about.

See you soon travelers!


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