How to start a one-man tourguide service?

November 21, 2008 5:15 PM

has anyone started a freelance tourguide company? i overhear tourists in my area complain that things are kind of boring. i know my area well, and i like showing people around. does anyone have any advice?

i'm in the SF bay area, and there's really no excuse to be bored here, in my opinion. i'm not talking about ruining people's local bars with an overrun of tourists. there are chocolate factory tours, beautiful mural walks, little museums and german delis that could use a boost in this recession. i want to redirect people from the megastores and pump some intrigue into local bay area businesses.

the pain of planning a real "deep" trip into the bay area is significant, the area's full of hidden gems. and i think most people settle for going to alcatraz a second time (not that there's anything wrong with alcatraz, it's not got much replay value though).

and obviously, i'd love to do this as a job for cash! what fun!

posted by k7lim to travel & transportation (16 comments total)

Two people on MeFi that I know of do this sort of thing: scram and lelilo. If you don't wind up with other good directions, MeMail them.
posted by jessamyn at 5:34 PM on November 21, 2008

The best city tour I ever took was on the Minetta stream, a NYC water way that got subverted, filled in, rediverted, and eventually incorporated (I think) into the municipal water treatment system. It was basically a walking tour of lower Manhattan, where we spent half the time peeking down manholes and finding overflow channels along the edge of the island. Quite literally, a "deep trip" into Manhattan. Fantastic!

I'm sure you could do something similar with SF. How about an elevation tour? Looking at how different neighborhoods have evolved due to the weird geography? SF snow routes, maybe? Something cool and fun, that gives a different view of the city.
posted by puckish at 5:35 PM on November 21, 2008

Are you bilingual? Knowing another language would be an instant starting point for this, as there is always demand for someone who both knows a city and can translate well into a tourist's native language.
posted by Nixie Pixel at 5:39 PM on November 21, 2008

Set something up in conjunction with a hostel. For example, the Virginia Hotel on Mason and.. (uh, well, it's across from the Pinecrest) is a Hostelling International establishment. The folks there are probably up for ANYTHING, so long as you don't drag them down to the Trannyshack right away.
posted by electronslave at 6:05 PM on November 21, 2008

We did a walking tour earlier this year in Chinatown in SF. It was fantastic. It took us to places we would never have gone on our own. The person guiding us owned the tour business and had a couple of people working for her for busy times.

I think the key to getting people on your tour is to get a web site up and get some good reviews of your tour up on Trip Advisor. That's how we find such businesses as you suggest.

Good luck!
posted by GregWithLime at 6:17 PM on November 21, 2008

Unless you're thinking travel agent sort of advice, you'll need a vehicle, ideally more comfortable and cleaner than a taxi, and make it clear how many people you can accommodate in said transportation. Pick-up and drop-off at their hotel would be nice.

Perhaps market it with emphasis on being a personal tour guide that can provide insight into the non tourist traps.

If driving tourists, would you want to accompany them at the destinations. If not, how to spend the time until picking them up again.

Dedicated cellphone number to reach you.

Have local maps to distribute. Have a website obviously, although maybe only hint at some of the potential destinations, lest others take your idea or the tourists just skip you and go there themselves. Cash or credit? Consider payment options, both online and in person.

If accompanying them, brush-up on photography composition for portraits and landscapes for when they hand the camera to you to take their picture. Things like the rule of thirds and identifying the portrait mode option on point-and-shoot cameras. Actually, that's another idea to market, if accompanying them, taking their picture at the places so they have them for keepsakes.

You have a good idea, you just need to market it right, make it visible, and keep in mind that many people just take a trip to relax and have a good time. A simple walk along the water followed by dinner somewhere interesting may be all it takes.
posted by hungrysquirrels at 6:19 PM on November 21, 2008

Here's your web site: A several-screen web form, asking in detail about people's activity and cuisine preferences (please say you know vegetarian places!). People fill it in, you get the information, and create a customized itinerary for them.

Then, they receive either:

• a customized document, complete with maps, critical information, and perhaps just enough detail to whet their appetites without removing all trace of mystery;
• OR for a deluxe treatment, they put themselves in your hands and in a taxi for a surprise destination every morning and afternoon (or whatever works schedule-wise).

IF you decide to try this, I *might* be persuaded to help you test the concept. We were planning a 4-adult trip to SF late summer, but something came up & we couldn't go. We still have the airline ticket credits & have to use them by May...
posted by amtho at 7:26 PM on November 21, 2008

Phil Goodstein used to do a lot of tours through Colorado Free University. It looks like he's just doing a series of lectures now but I know he used to have all sorts of different things listed and they always seemed popular. Here is a google list relating to him with a you tube video and it looks like he's written some books too. I'm sure SF must have some sort of Free University thing. The one here in Denver used to be really helpful with people who wanted to try just the sort of thing you're talking about.
According to this link it looks like maybe he's doing the tours through one of the Denver realty companies now.
posted by BoscosMom at 7:28 PM on November 21, 2008

Some possible hooks:

Outdoorsy stuff: hiking or mountain biking tours (or even kayaking). Muir Woods, all the great hiking and biking trails on the Peninsula, etc.

A tour of all the weird sculptures in Golden Gate Park. You know how there's all kinds of random statues tucked into various groves and thickets? That's one of the best parts of the park, but I don't know of a specific tour of that particular flavor of San Francisco weirdness. Buena Vista Park is a great mini hike, and the paths cobbled with old tombstones are another great example of random weirdness.

Something friendlier to small children than Fisherman's Wharf, like putting together an itinerary of places like Yerba Buena, the playgrounds of San Francisco, that one crazy park at Berkeley Marina where kids get to nail shit together and paint stuff and it's like the Lord of the Flies, and a map noting especially kid-friendly non-chain restaurants, like Chenery Park or Emmy's Spaghetti Shack. There are also a ton of great children's boutiques in the Bay Area that might not be known to out of towners. Places like Hidden Villa Farm in Los Altos or the various farms in Half Moon Bay are great too.

I think amtho's idea of a website where people can filter their preferences is terrific and that if you included things that would appeal to families, and also to people who might not be as mobile as some tourists are (whether due to age or disability), that would be helpful too. Parts of the Bay Area are hard to access if you're not spry, and you could help with workarounds for that.
posted by padraigin at 9:17 PM on November 21, 2008

Two people on MeFi that I know of do this sort of thing: scram and lelilo.

Hey, k7lim, I just noticed your question and thought I'd drop in. I've been a tour guide in Maine for 15 years now — on buses, on foot, and (the last three years) on boats.

At the moment I work for one small part of (I didn't realize it when I began) an enormous company, but I did start and run (with my wife), for about four years, a two-person walking tour as a freelance operation back in the 1990s. (It was called Legends, Lies, and Local History, which is where lelilo comes from.)

The whole thing was extremely low-key, and to my mind, successful, although we never made much money at it. We didn't do much advertising (or take reservations), just told all the B&Bs in town, and the motels, plus everyone we knew, what was happening. (We also told the Chamber of Commerce, although we never joined, because it was way expensive; we started the whole business, in fact, on a budget of close to $0.) Then we showed up at a central spot in town (the Village Green) at the scheduled time and waited for customers. If anyone showed up, we went; if nobody was there (which was true most of the time), we went home. My wife's tour route traveled to the west and north, through the historic district of Bar Harbor, and my tour went east and south, along the town’s Shore Path.

One thing that got me was that, even after we asked at the town offices, it turned we didn't need any special license or permits to start the tour. Nor did we need insurance, although some people told us we were crazy to take the chance that someone would, say, fall into the ocean, or get hit by a car, and sue us. (Nothing ever happened along those lines.) Legal things probably are different out in SF.

Another difference is that, at the time, the mortgage on our house (which we built) was about $120/month, probably not the case where you are. If we got, say, six people to go on the tour, at $25/couple, that was $75 for about two hours of walking around talking to people. $37.50/hour is not a bad pay rate, although again, many many days nobody showed up for the tour.

(The greatest tour, to my mind, would be to charge somebody $100 or so for a private car tour of Acadia National Park, which starts a few hundred yards from our house, but to get involved with the federal government you need to take out a lot of insurance. I think it’s more than a million dollars. So while guiding tours that have included the park — on boats, or on buses for cruise ship passengers— I’ve worked for other companies that deal with all that paperwork, and those fees. If you can make large amounts of money only by putting out large amounts of money in the first place, that seems like real work to me.)

I guess we really had ulterior motives with our tour company — my wife really likes walking, and I was doing the research anyway for a series of books I want to write about the history/geology/biology of the edge of our island. (But probably never will, if I don’t stop spending all my time reading MetaFilter.) My boat tour these days, in fact, starts out along the same Shore Path. We also wanted a job where we didn’t work much, because our son had just been born, and we decided to hang out with him instead of working.

Anyway, millions of tourists come to Bar Harbor every summer, and there was no walking tour back then, so we filled a niche. (Something to remember, though, is that most Americans hate walking.) We ultimately were driven out of business by a larger firm in town, a kayak/bike rental place with a shop on one of the main streets, where it could advertise. (Although I think that they too never made the freelance walking tour business work, and now do all of their tours with pre-ticketed cruise ship traffic.)

It doesn’t look like San Francisco gets as many cruise ships as Bar Harbor, and the ships keep a large portion of the ticket money, but if you can come up with a new slant, and make the right connections, this could be a good way to do it. No matter what you do, with so many tours already operating there it’s the whole niche thing that matters. All that competition also could be considered proof there’s a market for tour guiding in SF. And people are always looking for something new.

One of my favorite quotes about writing (which is the other thing I don’t work very hard at) points out that people are always saying they should write a book when they’ve never even written, say, a Letter to the Editor. Maybe you should just work as a tour guide somewhere to see what you think, instead of trying to start a whole company.

How about with the SF Vampire Tour?

p.s.
I think amtho's idea of a website where people can filter their preferences is terrific

Supposedly, the customer is always right, but to my mind (again, I'm a terrible businessman), this is the backwards approach. You can't be all things to all people, and that way your customers are telling you what to do. You should design any tour around something you already like — the whole 'follow your bliss' thing — and then figure out how you can get other people excited about it. Better to be talking all the time about something you enjoy, which will communicate itself in a good way to your clients. And that way, even if the whole thing turns out to be a failure, you will have (mostly) enjoyed it.
posted by LeLiLo at 12:16 AM on November 22, 2008 [1 favorite]

I really like the idea of knowing I have a certain set of days and that I'm coming to a certain city, logging online, selecting a tour of non-touristy destinations, paying and making arrangements online, then - the MOST IMPORTANT PART - executing what's been promised and paid for. Yes, hint at the places - maybe even give good descriptions without the place name itself - but make sure your tour actually includes those places. Allowing for some free time to explore on one's own is always nice.

Putting out the good word (or a laminated sheet at each room of the hostel or B&B describing the 'show up at this place at this time with $XX in hand and join up' alternative to the 'signing up and planning ahead' crowd. Maybe working with the B&B / Hostel for some sort of commission is worth the effort and contacts.

Heck, I could do something like this in Seoul. Mind if I borrow a few of your ideas for a market about 7,000 miles away?
posted by chrisinseoul at 7:29 AM on November 22, 2008

I'm kind of with Lelilo on the follow your bliss thing.

I'm thinking about doing a longish trip to the UK some day using mostly bicycle transportation. Sites like Sustrans are nice, but a while back I found a page that was an individual's page describing the South Downs Way which is a 60-odd mile trail in Southern England. OK, it's not a pinnacle of state of the art web design, but it's got a lot of information a person like me might want (like what people in the UK think of as a smooth vs rough trail). No imagine what his site would be like if he made it a bit more commercial and organized periodic rides with a support vehicle hauling camping equipment and doing on-trail repair and what not.

If you can find a niche like that, something that people are interested in and which you can serve as a guide to, you'll already have your market.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 9:51 AM on November 22, 2008

Er, Now imagine....
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 9:52 AM on November 22, 2008

As Jessamyn noted above, my husband and I do this. We launched an offbeat bus tour company in LA 18 months ago, and have written a range of tours on themes including true crime, literature, film, architecture and rock history. It's an incredibly rewarding field for a pair of LA-boosting history geeks, but it's also very hard work.

You might reconsider the "one-man" part of your concept and find someone to work with, even if it's just an hourly employee. Groups are notoriously hard to manage once they leave a vehicle, and if you get pigeonholed by a patron you'll want the tour narration or group movement to continue while you talk with them.

We use a bus to move people around, and have been fortunate to find a bus vendor that is easy to work with and sends reliable equipment (mics, video monitors) and drivers who are gracious to us and our passengers. A bad egg in the driver's seat can really spoil an outing, as can a dead mic. The use of a bus lets us cover a lot of ground and show vintage photos and film clips en route, but has high built-in costs. Walking tours are probably a better way of getting your feet wet.

For walking tours, make sure the route has interesting elements throughout, well-maintained sidewalks or paths, restrooms and someplace to buy snacks and drinks. Pick quiet areas along the route where your group can stop and hear narration, or get yourself a lightweight electronic megaphone. If you want to try this and can't afford insurance, at least have everyone sign a release form. (Or look into this agency, which bundles insurance for small arts groups and might have a good rate.)

Our market is mainly locals who want to explore their home town, and so rather than advertising, we rely on press coverage, word of mouth and discounts for public radio subscribers. Tourists are harder to reach, and there are scads of business boosting groups, magazines and websites that will tell you that if you spend a large annual sum they will guarantee patrons. Don't count on that. Build a strong set of tours, generate positive word of mouth from patrons and from the local businesses you take them to, make fliers and put them anywhere you're allowed, send press releases to local travel reporters... and if you're lucky, you too might get the chance to roam around your town with folks who appreciate your sensibility. Good luck!
posted by Scram at 9:07 AM on November 23, 2008

I was recently in Cape Town and in our brief time there, we wanted to somehow connect with locals. I did some searching on "cultural tours" and came up with some good "meet the people" type options - one where we visited various people in townships and had dinner with a family - it was one of the best parts of our trip. Local tour organizations like Coffee Bean Routes and Anduela offered interesting themed tours like jazz safaris and cooking tours - you might get some ideas. International visitors might enjoy the opportunity to meet and interact with locals in a more personal way than the large soul-less tour operators afford.

I can attest to the fact that lelilo is an awesome tour guide, btw. Plus, his advice on following your bliss is most excellent - for this or any other endeavor!
posted by madamjujujive at 12:56 PM on November 25, 2008

Wow. It looks like, out of all the people in the U.S., Scram might be your best role model — what with her company's work in a large West Coast city, their small number of niche tours that all look fantastic, and their excellent website explaining it all. (A great company name, too.) At the very least you should take one of the tours if you're in that area; I'd really like to, myself, but being 3,260 miles away, I'm about as far as you can get from LA and still be in the continental U.S.

Maybe someday. Anyway, I started going on way too long above, but I wanted to drop back in and mention something about tour guiding that's been on my mind lately: the specific information passed out while guiding is really not that important. Not that you don't need to know it, but that, like an iceberg, you can keep most of it to yourself, and concentrate more on making your guidees comfortable.

Over the course of leading around tens of thousands of people, I have never had anyone say to me, "Gee, I wish I had learned a lot more during the tour." I have had people tell me I'm the best guide they've ever had (and way too many tell me I remind them of Dennis Miller), I think because I connect with them, ignore the whole group occasionally to talk with people individually as the tour moves from place to place, sometimes even announce that they deserve some peace and quiet, or time to talk among themselves, and I'm not going to say anything at all for the next five or ten minutes.

Again, I have a different clientele than Scram's groups, doing a general interest thing for tourists, which makes my job easier because I can wander off into other areas — one memorable discussion on the boat this summer involved some people from Southern Indiana, who wanted to talk about how their neighborhood is being invaded by armadillos (which turned out to be true). It's harder, too, because the people often are on a week-long excursion where they go on a tour every day, so by the time they get to me they're already sick of tour guides. And even happier, in that case, not to have information stuffed into them.

When I first started guiding, I was impressed by one older guide who seemed to know it all... but over time I guided people who on other trips to the area had had him as a guide, and they hated him. He was, in fact, a know-it-all, and the guidees felt like they were being harassed by an imperious lecturer, someone who never asked who they were, not even how they were, but merely expected them to sit there and shut up while he went on and on.

You'll get sick of talking about the same thing over and over, too, no matter how many different aspects to your tour there are, and it's nice to have people spend some of their time telling you stories. Which also helps you connect with them. The boat crew likes to imitate me at work: "Oh, you're from Pittsburgh? That's where I was born." Or "From Des Moines? I was out a little east of that area years ago seeing where Herbert Hoover grew up..." "From St. Louis? Or are you really from Cape Girardeau or Jefferson City, and you don't think I've heard of them?" (This comes easily for me, since I've traveled a lot of the U.S.; at one point I counted that I'd been in 198 of the nation's 210 largest cities.) Anyway, it seems to me that people like any personal attention, even merely to have their hometowns acknowledged, more than they want to hear dates and statistics.

p.s. madam jjj, thanks for the mention above. (Even people who haven't been around Metafilter for long quickly learn that the good madam stands out here. If more of the people on my tours had her intelligence, and intellectual curiosity, guiding for me would be even more enjoyable.)
posted by LeLiLo at 8:14 AM on November 28, 2008 [1 favorite]