Tour Guiding in the Age of AI

For the last couple of months, I have been working on relaunching my tour-guiding business and the social networks around it. This would be hard enough per se, but it is particularly cumbersome because it is a relaunch after a very long break. I stopped working, like everyone else in tourism, because of the pandemic restrictions and decided to take that imposed break to start my family. Though I don’t regret for a second prioritizing my family over my career and being fully present for my children during their first years of life, I am feeling a little bit lost navigating a world that changed so dramatically while I wasn’t focusing my attention on it.

It honestly feels like I somehow walked into a time machine.

When I stopped working, AI wasn’t a thing, there were temperamental algorithms, but they weren’t quite as incomprehensible as they are now. Platforms like GetYourGuide were just starting and hadn’t taken over Google and imposed their ways on everyone else. There were agencies and platforms, but they functioned differently. There was more space for individualization and, dare I say, humanization, both in the creation of tours and in the finding of said tours and guides.

Travellers still want guided tours and look for them. I feel like AI can create great itineraries, search the web for the best-rated experiences, and even find obscure ones. It obviously will not substitute for the experience of having a real human being show you a place and share their knowledge with you, because a guide shares more than facts. They share something a computer cannot: memory and emotions.

And I feel that is the bottom line of what someone is looking for on a tour: a bridge between themselves and the place they are visiting. A tour guide is that bridge, connecting the traveller and the place through their own experience of that place. We all crave human connection. We need it, and it puts us at ease and adds to our experience in a way a list cannot.

These musings I am sharing with you are not so much about that, because I think we can all agree with the former paragraph. My reflection here is more about how tour guiding is being, in a more or less veiled way, funnelled into a standardization that does not favour the guide or the traveller. It favours big platforms with AI-driven algorithms that are there not to ensure you have the best possible experience, but to fill the pockets of their shareholders.

If you Google for a tour, you will easily notice that what shows up very likely comes from a couple of now-gargantuan platforms. You will also notice that even the ones that are not coming from those aforementioned platforms have the same format for presenting tours. The reason for that is that even individual companies have formatted themselves to fit said platforms, leading to a complete standardization of the tours and offers.

And it is not just the format that is standardized. The content is too, because there are AI tools ready to adapt whatever you write to what performs better on Google and what people search for the most.

But what happens if you, the traveller, want something different?

Oh well, you will have to dig deeper, because anything outside the format will be buried on page 1000 of a Google search and you won’t even be able to find it.

Another point is that both platforms and Google favour tours that are “giving you the best value for your buck”. They favour cheaper tours, tours with prices per person, tours open to the public (though with small groups), and bury deeper in their pages private tours and tours that are priced higher.

Well, when I see a tour that says “3 hours for €20 per person” and I know how much the platform commission is (probably more than you think), plus how much Portuguese tax you are paying on the earnings, I can’t help but think: how much exactly is that guide being paid for those three hours?

Yes, possibly there was more than one person per tour, but still, there is not much profit left at the end of the day.

The only ones who can maintain that sort of logic are big companies that pay X to the guide and whose earnings are not related to how many people show up per tour. I also know this because, at the beginning of my career, I worked on that model, and you really don’t make that much. So the guide focuses on tips.

I have nothing against tips per se. I would be a hypocrite if I didn’t say I enjoy them very much myself. But having to rely on tips to make ends meet is not a good place to be, either for a guide or for a traveller.

If you are doing a tour with someone who is being paid a dignified amount for their work, you are working with someone who has a different kind of freedom, who can be more true to themselves and their own values because they will be focused on doing a great job, on being a great professional, but not restrained by the mentality of being there to please you enough that you will tip them in the end.

You will have a more truth-based connection with a guide who is not dependent on tips.

Going back to what algorithms don’t seem to favour: they don’t favour private tours.

And I am a big believer that private tours are better for everyone — guide and travellers. If you are with your family, partner, loved ones, or friends, you are more comfortable and the tour is tailored to you. The guide can get to know you and provide you with a much better service, simply because the focus is on you and not on multiple people.

The tour is much more likely to become a sharing moment that way. And, at the risk of repeating myself, you will connect more deeply with your guide, and your guide with you. And it is in that connection that the chance to create lifelong memories resides.

As a guide, I take the creation of memories as my number one job because that is what I want for the people who choose me as their guide. I want to make sure that the trip will stay with them. I want it to be special, and I will do my best to create, within my power, the conditions for that to happen: whether that means walking off the beaten track, listening to the guest and suggesting seeing something that was not on the plan but that they just shared would make them happy.

And the freedom to do that can only happen within the dynamics of a private tour.

Then there is the marketing and content-creation piece that goes into that market. And what does one do these days? One asks ChatGPT for advice and tries to follow it, only to realize that you can easily fall into one of two traps.

You will end up creating standardized content, or you will fall victim to AI’s tendency for empty praise and proceed with creating your own way while ChatGPT cheers you on and praises your unique abilities.

One way or the other, you will start following the machine’s advice and find yourself drifting from your own voice, until a moment when you catch yourself thinking: is this even me that I am finding in my own words?

That was happening to me, so I stopped and started to write what was on my mind. This was not AI-advised, and this was it.

How does one remain true to oneself when everything seems to be pushing you in a different direction?

Can you find the misaligned tile?

I have always loved this photo of the misaligned tile, and after two months of trying to figure out how things are working these days, I am very much feeling like that tile.

I believe in private tours. I believe in tours that are priced per tour and not per person. I believe in people being paid fairly for their work. I believe in unique experiences, unique voices, and individualized experiences.

But my question to the ether lately has been: how on earth, when there are entire streets tiled up the same way, is anyone going to notice that misaligned tile?