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Wednesday 11 February 2009

Tour Guide best practice - Pricing your tour



This week OurExplorer came across some very interesting experiences from some of the tour guide bookings on OurExplorer. Some tour guides like Pablo in Argentina (pictured) have a policy of including all fares, transport, food, drinks, entry fees etc in his day price. I think this works best for the tour guide and the client as it prevents any surprises. A happy client = a happy tour guide.

However some tour guides will try and request more additional funds from a client post the booking. Is this fair?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I've been a proffessional private tourguide in Barcelona since 2000 and my fees include only my services for a number of hours (usually 4h for half day tours or 8h for fulldays), and private transportation if it is requested by the client.

I do not include entrance fees for two reasons:

1. It is a fix price, no matter how many people is in the group.
2. My clients are free to decide what sites they want to visit inside (and therefore pay for the tickets) and which ones they want to see just from outside. That keeps my itineraries perfectly customized for each group.

I don't include meals in my full day tours (not even in my Tapas Bars Tour), because:

1. Each client has different food preferences and needs.
2. Each client has different budgets.

So during the tour (or during the booking process) I find out what kind of meal would be more suitable for them, and then I take them to where I think they'll enjoy the experience the most.

So in my opinion, yes it is fair not to include everything in your fees (of course, as long as the client knows about it), in order to create a tour 100% personalized.