We’ve been between adventures for a little while now, which has given us pause to reflect; what do we love, what do we not love so much? What are we glad we did (and want to do again) and what do we wish we had passed on? Turns out how we travel is a constantly evolving process; we laugh about the facts that we are frequently proud of the fact that we’ve learned so so many lessons and travel much better than we used to while simultaneously continuing to screw all new things up! To take just one example – guided tours. They vary wildly in price and quality, and not always in 1:1 relation. So what gives?
To begin with, what about the free tours? Well first of all, and this should not come as a surprise to anybody, they aren’t really free unless you’ve got the fortitude to look somebody in the eye who has spent two hours walking you around town and say “well, thanks!” and scoot off over the horizon, leaving them to sell matchsticks in the snow… or something. The proposition on free tours is almost always that you’re going to offer a gratuity when it’s over. For all we know they make out better by letting people set their own price rather than simply advertising a set number, but whatever works for them. Our suggestion is to just go into those tours with placid acceptance that you’ll be slipping them a couple of fins when it’s done. As far as the quality of those tours goes, honestly, they’re never that bad. Tour guides whose income is directly tied to the judgment on their work when it’s over are definitely incentivized. The only kind-of downside is that they often tilt towards entertaining in the “havin’ a good time” sense, showing you a good-time pub and maybe even sitting for a drink or three before moving on. Going on a “free” tour of a serious or intellectually rigorous topic might not be the best idea. Otherwise, they’re a pretty safe bet.
Conversely, paid tours seem to vary wildly. Maybe it’s the Americans in us but we get, er, opinions on value for money when we pay up front. The thing about paid tours is that the typical business model is that there is a company that acts as a clearing house, and they’ll develop a tour that they think will be popular; just for an example, let’s say The Louvre. They’ll advertise the tour and handle the money, and then staff up the guides as needed. But, that means your guides aren’t on the line beyond the work-for-hire relationship, and that means you can see… swings in quality. We’ll never forget some truly great tours we’ve been on, like a Ph.D. art history student walking us through the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and a damn-near-magical excursion through the Uffizi in Florence, Italy. But there’s also a double-handful of tours that, frankly, we forget we ever went on unless we sit and think on it a bit. So what’s our advice? Well, a couple of things. First, check out guides who have hung out their own shingles. They rise and fall on their own reputations, and if they’ve stayed in the business for more than a short spell then they’re probably going to be alright. (It would be a dishonor to the man’s memory to only talk about him in an aside, so please do read about our day with Danny Sheehy.) After that, the best you can do is the usual sifting of reviews. Go with the most recent ones you can find, and prioritize ones where the reviewer gives you any kind of details or anecdotes that can give you a sense of the guide’s personality.
What we can’t really do is provide a concrete recommendation for tours. (Danny Sheehy, mentioned above, sadly has passed away.) We used to swear by Context Travel for our tour needs, and it’s not that their quality has dropped (that we know of) but rather that their prices have skyrocketed. We’ve all got different ideas of what’s “expensive”, so that’s up to you of course, but we just ran a sample check on their site and it was north of 300USD for 2 people to join a group tour at the Uffizi. For 3 hours that just feels rich for our blood, and that’s pretty indicative of their pricing now. Any time we see a tour that they offer that sounds interesting it just always seems bloody expensive. That said, if those prices work for you we’ve almost always had a positive experience with them.
