The travel industry generates massive revenue and is one of the world’s most significant economic sectors. You can get involved even with little capital—simply by offering your services as an independent tour guide.
Our philosophy is that people should earn a good living. But how do we achieve that when services are expected to be free and city guides work for nothing? When travelers care only about the lowest price? When everything is booked online and platforms like GetYourGuide dominate the market? The internet creates monopolies: wherever there is high demand, new players quickly rush in.
Major booking intermediaries push into the market with multi-million-dollar budgets. However, they create dependency, and we would normally need substantial funds ourselves to market our services. „Normally“—because in reality, we don’t: we rely entirely on word-of-mouth.
It is therefore understandable to offer a service for free at first while hoping for fair compensation. We rely on the fairness of travelers, as guides still need to cover their cost of living in Switzerland. A guide can offer the exact same services as on major booking platforms without paying us anything—Friends.guide is completely free.
Local tourist information centers excel with their own authentic, high-quality offerings. We want to bring them on board and are happy to link to them.
Is a local tour guide who personally looks after travelers still needed and paid today? We believe so, and we continue to pursue this vision with passion and idealism.