What to Choose? Free Tour vs. Tour with a Guide

Free walking tours: good option on a budget

 

Free tours invite tourists to join the tour without paying any money up-front and without requiring a booking. This option obviously sounds great, especially if you’re on a tight budget. With such free tours, you can explore the most popular places in the city, view important sights, and feel like you enjoyed your trip.
However, there are some drawbacks that many might find quite severe:

Free walking tours aren’t technically 100% free

 

When the tour ends and a guide finishes their speech, all tourists are invited to pay what they feel the tour was worth (it’s optional). Here, some might feel uncomfortable as you may think that your payment wasn’t enough or you didn’t pay at all which may leave you uneasy afterward.

Be ready for big crowds

 

Some of the free tours can have 20 and 30 tourists at once, so you can imagine how crowded it will be. This may cause several difficulties: you might not hear the tour well, see the glory of the sights fully, or be able to take photos as everyone else will be taking them too. Still, you can find some free walking tours with smaller groups.

Free tours aren’t suitable for people with reduced mobility

 

If you have some health problems that don’t allow you to walk for too long, require you to take occasional breaks, or have small children that need a slower pace — the majority of free walking tours will not suit you.

Most common routes and sights

 

During your free tour, you won’t see a lot of (or even any) unusual places or hidden gems. Most routes that you’ll find focus on the most popular city attractions, offering almost nothing new. Still, if you haven’t seen those places, it might be suitable for you.

With a guide, you can make a tour truly yours

 

While with a free walking tour, you can explore the most common places of the city, a guide opens you with an opportunity to make a tour more diverse.

• You can find a guide yourself and decide what route you want to take, unlike in a free tour where everything’s pre-planned.

• If you have any mobility problems, a guide can provide a car for the tour to make your travel more comfortable.

• There’s more generally more to get. Take the Louvre Museum in Paris, for example. While a free walking tour of the Louvre may give you a basic overview of the museum, a guide allows you to ask questions and learn about the artists and their works in a way that's simply not possible on a free tour.

• You can ask a guide to include some interesting activities in the tour: diving, horse riding, flying on air balloons, paragliding — everything your heart desires.

• With a guide, you can get closer to locals and learn more about their lifestyle. You can also try agritourism, talk to locals, ask about their culture and stories, and a guide will help with that.

 

 

If you’re looking for a place to find good verified guides — Find Guide app, is the way to go. Here, you can choose a country you want to visit, sights to see and find a guide that matches your request. After that, you can get in touch with them to discuss the tour in detail, make plans, and create a personal route.
With Find Guide, creating a tour of your dreams is easier than a simple walk in the park!

All things said, it’s your tour and your decision

 

Whether free walking tours are for you or a guide, it all comes to your enjoyment during the tour. Choose what suits your desires the most and set out on a journey, exploring the majestic world around you.