Free Walking Tour
Free Walking Tour – free of charge walking tour, where participants give tips tour guide for his work.[1] Guide can take money or give it to his Free Walking Tour organization. Free Walking Tour typically has a schedule. Weather and number of coming participants doesn’t matter.
History
The movement appeared in 2004 in Berlin.[2] According to the portal freetoursnetwork in 2016 free walking tour exists in 206 cities in 75 countries around the world.
The logotype Free Walking Tour has often picture of the legs or left traces.
Analogy
The concept of Free Walking Tour in the tourism branch can be compared with a freeware on the IT-market. Free software can be an advertising of the commercial product or its manufacturer. The organizers of the Free Walking Tour often provide some business services such as a shuttle service, different entertainment, thematic, motorized and individual tours; however, the free tour model has developed as a hugely popular way to tour cities in its own right in recent years, with more and more tour companies offering free walking tours exclusively, such as Generation Tours in Dublin, Ireland, for example. Following this trends, online platforms offering free walking tours were also created. The first such platform was FREETOUR.COM in 2014.[3] Later, other platforms of this type started, such as GuruWalk in 2017.[4] The concept can be a little confusing, the traveler has to pay the guide at the end of the tour based on his experience. This concept is commonly referred to as a pay-what-you-please walking tour, because it empowers the client to pay based on their satisfaction with the tour and encourages the guide to always do their best. [5] Free Walking Tour guides can be compared with the street performers who entertain passers-by and offer for donations as well as compared to history professors who bring a city and it's stories to life. Because tour guides only work for gratuities, the quality of a free tour tends to be significantly and consistently better than traditional "pay first" tours, which can take advantage of unknowing travelers.
Free Walking Tour Media
Tourists on a walking tour of the lower canyon at Petra, Jordan
A walking tour in Baden-Baden
A glass stud in York sidewalk. Such glass studs are the remnants of the York Breadcrumbs trail, an initiative from 2005 which incorporated three custom walking tours and (now defunct) website. The tours included the Minster, the Shambles, the Guildhall etc. with a story thrown in.
References
- ↑ Molnar, Agnes (2014-04-25). "Strassenökonom – die Stadtführerin" (in de). Capital (G+J Wirtschaftsmedien GmbH & Co. KG). http://www.capital.de/dasmagazin/strassenoekonom-die-stadtfuehrerin.html. Retrieved 2016-01-25.
- ↑ Wade, Roger (2011-12-07). "List of free walking tours around the world" (in en). PriceofTravel. http://www.priceoftravel.com/1835/list-of-free-walking-tours-around-the-world/. Retrieved 2016-01-25.
- ↑ Free Walking Tours Toledo, Freetour-toledo.es; Free Tour Toledo. "Freetour-toledo.es - free tours and Book budget and with Toledo local guides". Freetour-toledo.es (in español).
- ↑ López, José Ángel Plaza (2018-08-03). "Spain's GuruWalk wants to be the Airbnb of walking tours". EL PAÍS English Edition. Retrieved 2022-04-25.
- ↑ Free Tours, Guruwalk. "GuruWalk - The best free tours around the world". Guruwalk.