Many independent travelers have long mastered the skill of organizing excursions on their own, but such events do not always take place in the most informative way. Sightseeing tours purchased from agencies can result in a fairly large amount, and walking in a crowd of tourists, trying to catch at least a fraction of information is not always comfortable. Therefore, today excursions from local residents are gaining more and more popularity. This option is very convenient, because it involves an individual approach, takes into account all the wishes of the tourist and, in general, can carry much more interesting information than a standard tour from a guide. Where to find locals who know everything about their city, and how to book a tour with them, we tell in detail in our article.

What is tripster?

In 2013, an interesting resource appeared on the Internet called, which initially was a kind of platform for travel lovers, within which tourists exchanged their opinions and gave recommendations on visiting a particular attraction. But in just a few months, the site turned into a real travel club, where it became possible to negotiate with local residents about organizing excursions.

Today, on the site you can order individual tours to attractions in 485 cities around the world. More than 210 thousand people used the services of the service in 2018 alone, most of whom were satisfied with the service received. And there is nothing to be surprised here: after all, the guides are local residents, very creative and enthusiastic people who know much more about their city than travel agency employees.

Who will be interested in the service?

First of all, Tripster is designed for independent, not package travelers. The site provides an opportunity to find unusual excursions from locals who, in addition to standard sightseeing tours, will show you secret corners, organize tasting tours and allow you to plunge into the cultural life of the city.

Especially attractive Tripster will be found by inquisitive and active tourists who are bored with monotonous excursions. As part of such events, travelers manage to climb to little-known rooftops for the best views of the city and go underground, test their creativity in pottery, art and dance, trace the technology of wine production and try different varieties of tea and coffee. As a rule, excursions from Russian-speaking locals are as rich as possible and fully meet the interests of tourists.

Advantages and Features

The services of the Tripster website have a number of important advantages, including:

1. A wide choice of excursions. As we mentioned above, Tripster organizes tours to 433 cities around the world. Several guides can work at one site at once, so finding a suitable option here is not difficult. And in addition to the most popular destinations on the site, you can also find little-known cities, the locals of which are ready to create all conditions for tourists to get to know the iconic places as fully as possible. It is noteworthy that today excursions from locals for locals are in high demand. So, for example, residents of Moscow often go to the company with a guide who combines a story about objects with exciting quests, puzzles and prizes.
2. Accounting for individual requirements. This is one of the most important advantages of Tripster. Firstly, the tour will be formed exclusively for you and your companions, and you will not find strangers at the event. Many guides from local residents recruit a group where the maximum number of people does not exceed 10. If there are more of you, then this issue is discussed individually with the guide. Secondly, the tour will be organized according to your interests. To understand how important this is, it is worth remembering at least guides from Turkey or Egypt, with whom the main part of the tour takes place at the factories of textiles, leather and carpets, rather than at the sight itself.
3. Possibility to book a tour in advance. If you know the exact dates of the trip, then using the Tripster system you can make an advance booking of the tour. And this is very convenient, because you do not have to look for the right person on the spot yourself, spending precious time on this. A good guide will take care of all the nuances of the walk and will try to do it in the best possible way.
4. Opportunity to speak with the tour guide before booking the tour. The site provides for communication with local residents providing their services. You can ask them any questions you are interested in and only then make a decision about the reservation. And after making an advance payment, you will be provided with the contact number of the guide. Thus, you will have the opportunity to contact him and discuss all the details in more detail.
5. Small down payment. After you agree with a local resident about the tour, you need to pay 20% of the total cost of the service. This is done so that the conductor is sure of the seriousness of your intentions: after all, you are booking a certain time, which will be denied to other customers. The rest of the amount you give to the guide in person.
6. Promotions and discounts. Tripster often offers discounts to its users. To take full advantage of the promotions, you must register on the site. Often you can find various promotional codes here: some of them are valid for only a few days, but provide a good discount (up to 10%), others are longer, but the discount in this case will be small (up to 5%).

How to book an excursion?

So, if the dates of the trip are determined, and the travel plan is drawn up, it's time to take care of the main part of the tour - the excursions. Using the Tripster website is quite simple, but we decided to compile detailed instructions for working with the system for you.

Step 1. Finding the Right Option

We are on the main page of the site, where you can see two search columns at once: one "Where are you going" - in the middle at the top and the second "Where are you going" - in the center. Both lines perform the same function. We enter the direction we need in any of them (in our case it will be) and click on the "Find" button.

At our request, the system was able to find 28 offers. To clarify the parameters of our search, we will use the form above, in which we indicate the dates we need, the number of people and the price range. Then click on the Find tab.

After adjusting the parameters, the number of offers was reduced to 3. In order to get acquainted with the excursions presented by local residents, click on the photo.

A new window opens in front of us, where you can see information about the guide, data about the tour itself, as well as a booking calendar. Busy days are highlighted in pink, free days in green. Below the calendar are reviews of tourists who have already used the services of this local resident. Be sure to read the opinions of other travelers about the guide and his organizational skills. Having studied the information on all three proposals, we opted for the most budget option with a large number of positive reviews. Now we click on the date we need in the presented calendar and proceed to the next step.

After we clicked on the planned date, a form appeared in front of us. Here it is important to indicate the day of the proposed excursion, the number of tourists, first and last name, email address and phone number. Below is a field in which you can ask the guide all your questions. Please note that by filling out this form, you are not booking an excursion yet, but only declaring your intention. You can finally reserve the date after the guide answers the questions asked.

When you make a final decision about booking an excursion, you need to make an advance payment for the service. It is 20% of the total amount of the tour. Payment can be made using a credit card or bank transfer. We choose the method convenient for us in the appropriate form. Here you can also ask the organizers a question and cancel the order if you are not satisfied with the answers of the guide.

After payment, a notification about the completed transaction will be sent to your email inbox. The rest you will pay at a personal meeting with the guide. This is how the site with excursions from local residents works.

Is it possible to cancel the booking

If you have made an advance payment, but suddenly the trip fails, I am ready to return the funds to you. The main thing in this situation is to contact the guide as soon as possible and inform him about the cancellation of the reservation. After that, it is important to notify the site support service by writing a letter to the administration at [email protected]. Funds will be refunded in accordance with the system return policy:

1. the money will be returned in full if you inform about the cancellation of the reservation at least 5 days before the planned excursion
2. if the cancellation occurs less than 5 days before the agreed meeting, then the site is ready to refund the prepayment only if the trip is disrupted for reasons beyond the control of the tourist (for example, flight cancellation)

It is also important to take into account that if a local resident, having agreed with you, spent his own money to buy entrance tickets or made other expenses that cannot be compensated if the tour is canceled, the prepayment will be returned minus the amount spent by him.

Conclusion

Excursions from local residents are a tempting alternative to standard tourist walks. On the one hand, they provide an opportunity to enjoy the sights you are interested in in an individual format, on the other hand, they reveal much more interesting information about the objects. At the same time, the organization of the walk takes place on a convenient day for you, taking into account only your interests.

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I was absolutely fascinated by the idea of ​​everything free in this world and especially such opportunities in travel! Only if recently I myself “ate free cheese”, now I decided to return the favor to the dear Universe and do something good, of course, for free!

Get approval by e-mail "from above" and beyond follow the news in a group where announcements of applications for greeters periodically appear;

First "catch" an interesting foreigner for you(not forgetting to correlate your language and other abilities with the wishes of the guest) and declare your desire to become a greeter for him on certain days and hours;

From the project coordinator get guest contacts, promptly write to him and arrange a meeting, not forgetting about the feedback from the coordinator, so that he is aware of what is happening;

meet a guest, take a walk, chat, enjoy mutual acquaintance, and also take a joint photo (even if it’s a selfie) and ask for feedback about a walk on the Tripadvisor website: link for St. Petersburg and for Moscow;

keep hunting for new foreign guests in your city!

Directly about your experience of participating in this project I can tell you a little for now, since my greeter debut was quite recent. I was going to show Dostoevsky's Petersburg to a novice Italian photographer, but in the end we went around, it seems, the entire historical center of the city, since the weather and free time allowed it. In addition to traditional conversations about Russian culture (vodka-girls-bears), during the walk I took my new acquaintance to the famous Pyshechnaya on Bolshaya Konyushennaya, and the excursion ended with a delicious dinner, which I got as a “thank you” for the hospitality. I won't lie, it was nice)

She shared with me a much richer experience of "guest farming" one of the most active Moscow greasers Vera Kukoleva…

Vera, please tell us what funny things happened to your sightseers in Russia?

It is very touching to watch how foreigners diligently try to learn how to read Russian and remember basic expressions. Instead of a long and terribly difficult "hello", sometimes the familiar "hello!" is obtained, with which tourists intend to demonstrate their politeness in shops and hotels. Well, "Pestopakh" instead of "Restaurant" is a well-known story.

Once, sightseers from America asked where I usually buy matryoshkas. I immediately imagined how every weekend I go to the sales of Russian folk toys at a student discount. I had to tell you that practically only tourists buy nesting dolls.

And what negative emotions can you get from greetering?

Negative impressions from excursions are extremely rare. They are rather exceptions, confirming the rule that greetering always brings only joy. Sometimes it's a shame when guests are not at all interested in anything related to the history of the city, its architecture. Such people just want to “talk about life”, and the preparation of the excursion turns out to be useless. And for each walk I carefully prepare in advance: I select the material, I try to find something new and interesting.

The project is free, but it's always nice to get a "thank you" for your work. In what ways did foreign guests thank you?

It is very nice when guests bring me souvenirs from their country. Once a group from Brussels presented a box of real Belgian chocolate (delicious, delicious!), and tourists from Italy brought a traditional Neapolitan pendant for good luck. Some foreigners, knowing that the program is free, want to tip their thanks and pay for the tour, but I never take money: for me it spoils the whole charm of the walk.

Meeting a greeter with tourists is like meeting good friends. We communicate easily, exchange stories about life in Russia and abroad. I give guests advice on how best to spend time in Moscow, where to go, how not to get lost in the subway. Often we maintain relationships after a walk and really remain friends for a long time. And who would think of taking money from friends? Therefore, I fundamentally refuse to "pay".

I thank Vera for a piece of her experience that she shared with us, and I hasten to torment questions more and more creator of the Moscow greeter community Alexei Sotskov…

Alexey, please tell us about how the idea of ​​creating such a project was born?

A few years ago, I was planning to go to New York and looked for free guided tours there by the residents themselves. I came across the Big Apple Greeter community, created to combat the stereotype that New York is a gangster city. Local volunteers showed the guests not famous sights, but the real life of the American metropolis, which turned out to be not so dangerous.

I really liked the idea of ​​this project and I decided to organize something similar in Moscow. The emphasis was on linguistic students who lack language practice. There are a lot of conversation clubs and thematic lectures in foreign languages, but you usually have to pay to participate in them. And excursions for foreign guests are a free conversational practice, and even in an extremely informal setting. Greeters in many cities are mostly older people who have a lot of free time, while in Russia, on the contrary, there are more young people.

To what extent is it an official organization and does it have some kind of “head unit” that manages all regional ones?

So far, everything is managed by the virtual Global Greeter Network, which, however, has its own real president and even several departments responsible for marketing, accepting new members, etc. Annual meetings of the worldwide guitar community are held in various cities. There are plans to transfer the activities of the organization to the "official channel", but so far this is all at the design stage. It's funny, but some members of the Global Greeter Network, for example, all the same Greeters of the Big Apple (Big Apple Greeter) exist in a completely official form and are even sponsored by the city hall.

With this kind of support, I suspect that the New York greeter community is the most developed among its counterparts from other countries.

That's right, Big Apple Greeter is the most advanced, because they stood at the origins of a movement that originated as early as 1992, while their "official bosses" of the Global Greeter Network appeared only in 2005. There are now more than 70 members of the New York Greeters Association, who conduct about 150 excursions per month. True, it should be noted that such a high figure is achieved due to domestic tourists, that is, Americans from other states. We, unlike Big Apple Greeter, are more focused on working with guests from abroad.

Then let's just move on to the Russian greeter movement, tell us a little about its performance.

The Moscow community of greeters will soon be 4 years old, while the St. Petersburg community has been functioning for only 10 months. There are 70 participants registered in the capital, about 40 in the Northern capital. As for the number of excursions, it very much depends on the time of year. During the season in Moscow, about 50 excursions with foreign guests are held per month, and in winter - only 20. In St. Petersburg, the numbers are still quite modest: only 40 excursions since the creation of the community. However, it should be noted that the number of interested tourists is increasing every year, so we hope that we will continue to grow and develop!

I can only thank Alexey for an interesting conversation and wish the Greeters of both capitals more interesting guests from all over the world!

In recent years, startups have been rapidly conquering the travel market: Uber has long been conquering a niche from the traditional taxi, and vacation rentals are taking the place of familiar hotels. But that's not all - with the help of online platforms, travelers can easily find a guide among locals who are willing to 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 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. Your journey will begin at the Akaroa Cruise Port, meeting your local guide. The program includes a tour of almost all the picturesque landscapes of the Canterbury region - in eight hours, tourists will see Rakaia Gorge, Coleridge Lake, Porter Pass and Crustchurch, New Zealand's third largest city. In addition to exploring the Southern region, the program also includes a traditional dinner. The national cuisine of the country 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 site it is possible to order 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 80,000 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 - it finds a guide. The tour route is planned after the choice of a temporary satellite, there are no ready-made options here.

Perhaps the main advantage of the platform is the calling 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, as well as write a comment. “It keeps the guides on their toes and creates healthy competition that motivates people to work hard,” says Show Around founder Lynas Szablowski.

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

Show Around has had an iOS app for a long time, and recently the mobile service was made available to Android users as well.

Shiroube

The approach of the Japanese online service Shiroube is somewhat different from the rest - first of all, the tourist chooses 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 the gender of the guide. Each guide has its 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 developers of the service still collect some statistics, for example, lists with the most common locations and recommendations are regularly updated on the site. So, during a trip to Shanghai, locals offer to walk along Nanjing Street and try dumplings - a dish similar to dumplings, but cooked according to an old Chinese recipe.

The service is focused on a fun pastime with visits to nightclubs, various workshops and non-tourist pubs, and the price of the tour 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 outdoor activities 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 an opportunity to earn money.

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

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

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

Launched just last year, the Vayable online platform 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, but also teach. For example, one of the proposals is a course on photography at night in Paris. The guide will take tourists through the Latin Quarter and the Seine, as well as tell you how to take good night portraits.

Rent a guide

German start-up Rent a Guide offers guide services for all kinds of holiday activities - from dining in the best national traditions on the 123rd floor of the Burj Khalifa to flying in a hot air balloon or 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.

The hot air balloon ride will cost $300 and the jeep safari will cost $45.

Airbnb, an online rental platform, launched the Trips project relatively recently - last fall. At the moment, the service operates in 12 cities and offers more than 500 excursions. The startup is more focused on leisure activities that locals can talk about. For example, you can visit a violin workshop in Paris, ride vintage cars, and even take part in a marathon in Kenya.

“We want to bring back the element of magic to travel, in the center of which is people,” said the head of the company, Brian Chesky.

In addition, here you can try your hand at charity work and take part in socially significant events, such as helping stray dogs and a workshop 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 your trip from start to finish.

Excursions for independent travelers and vacationers on the official website of the Tripster agency. Book unusual excursions and walks from locals and make your trip unique and unforgettable. Excursions are held in almost 400 cities around the world.

Tripster and unusual excursions

The Tripster service offers 2.5 thousand unusual excursions from local residents in 340 cities around the world. They are organized and conducted mainly by our former compatriots currently living in these countries. Russia is also very widely represented. In addition to individual excursions, the Tripster website, in the "Trips" section, offers whole unique trips around the native country and Bali.

Tripster is a platform where guides - locals and travelers - meet. The guide offers the service the option of an excursion or a themed walk in his place of residence, and Tripster places it on his website. Before placement, the service can make suggestions to the local resident on how to improve his unusual excursion and make it really unique and attractive for tourists.

The tourist, in turn, finds an offer of an unusual excursion or thematic walk from a local resident on the Tripster website and books it.

All unusual excursions offered on the site were invented by guides - local residents, sometimes with improvements made on the advice of the Tripster service, but always proven and reliable. On this site you will not find bus tours for large groups of tourists with boring rehearsed guides. You will plunge into a world inaccessible to ordinary travelers who book standard excursions "for everyone", get unique, unforgettable impressions during your trip and personal communication with a guide - a local resident.

Choosing and ordering an excursion online

By going to , answer the question "Where are you going?" in the search form by selecting a place from the drop-down list or entering it manually. As a result, all suggestions of local residents for unusual excursions and walks will be displayed, indicating their name and price. By clicking on the selected offer, you will be redirected to a page with a detailed description of the tour, a widget with a booking button and a link to contact the guide - a local resident.

All excursions offered on the Tripster website are unique, and before booking the one that interests you, contact the guide using the link on the website and ask him all the questions you are interested in related to the theme and holding of the event. If you have received answers to all your questions, go to the "Book" tab, select the date, start time of the tour, the number of tourists, your name, contact details and click the "Submit" button.

After the guide confirms the conduct of the selected tour, his contact details will become available to you: phone and e-mail, by which you can contact him directly to clarify individual details.

The uniqueness of unusual excursions and walks booked on the Tripster website also lies in the fact that together with a guide - a local resident, you can make adjustments to the event so that it best suits your desires: change the route, add or exclude visited places, change the time of stay in them and so on.

After all questions about the event are resolved, you pay 16% of the cost of the excursion on the Tripster website, and transfer the rest of the amount to the guide - a local resident after an unusual excursion or walk.

If your trip does not take place, the Tripster service will return the prepayment.

Cancellation of the booked excursion

If you decide to cancel a booked unusual tour, then

• firstly, inform the guide - a local resident;
• secondly, cancel the order on the Tripster website.

If you cancel 6 or more days in advance, the deposit will be refunded in full. In case of cancellation of the tour in 5 or less days, the decision to return the prepayment depends on the guide.

In order for the refund to be made, send a request to the e-mail specified in the "Refund Policy" section of the Tripster website. The prepayment will be returned to the same card with which it was received.

Visit and make your trip unique and memorable with extraordinary excursions and walks from locals.

Like many ancient cities, Moscow grew like a tree with annual rings. However, having received the status of the capital “in its youth”, it also acquired an unusual path of development. Therefore, the sights of Moscow are located in an interesting way: large streets with buildings from different eras, and whimsical lanes with courtyards scatter from the Kremlin walls and cathedrals. The concentration of interesting places here is unimaginable. To navigate them and find out exactly what is important to you, individual excursions around Moscow will best help.

At some distance from the city center, there are former frontiers on the outskirts of the capital - Donskoy, Novodevichy and other monasteries. Ancient architecture in them is combined with the solemnity of the necropolises and the corners of nature surrounding them. By the way, Moscow's natural beauties can compete with the greenest capitals of the world. Walking tours around Moscow are good not only in the city center, but in historical parks along the embankments, in forests on the outskirts of the city, in the territories of former estates.

For lovers of modernity, Moscow is just as promising a place as for connoisseurs of antiquity. A visit to Moscow City, other "skyscraper" and "high-altitude" walks around Moscow, excursions to the Ostankino television center - all this will create a vivid picture of the metropolis. It will be complemented by night excursions around Moscow - they are dedicated not only to the mystical and gloomy secrets of antiquity, but also to the turbulent life of clubs, floating venues and dancing places in the capital.

What kind of capital will seem to you - beautiful, ancient, Belokamennaya, Nerezinovoy, literary or heavenly for children - depends on the guide you choose and the tour of Moscow. The price of everything in Moscow may surprise you, but an author's excursion is that memorable gift for yourself and your loved ones, which you definitely won't regret. Among Muscovites who love educational leisure, city excursions are also gaining popularity - in Moscow-2019 there are many places that even the natives do not know about.