The Evolving Role of Tour Guides in the Age of Social Media

Mitch Bach is joined by ToursByLocals CEO Lisa Chen and Sherif Abiza, Chief Community Officer of Withlocals. Together they discuss a recent incident of guide poaching amongst tour platforms, and talk about what trust and fairness looks like in our industry.

Guide platforms operate differently than other OTAs like GetYourGuide, Viator or Klook, since they deal primarily in solo entrepreneurs who themselves are the face of the tour.

In this episode of Tourpreneur the group discusses:

• what does the platform's commission get spent on?
• how a guide platform acquires a customer
• what goes into a great guide profile
• the rise of video, and social commerce
• what it takes to build trust between travelers, guides and a platform
• how guides need to adopt a 'marketing mindset', beyond delivering a great tour
• what they think of Airbnb Experiences' new reboot

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