Do you want more bookings? Then don’t miss this post that explains, step by step, how to improve your profile to encourage travelers to book more!

There are 2 key elements to generate more reservations with your profile:

1. Everything must convey trust. Travelers still don’t know anything about you, nothing about your guruwalk. Your profile should inspire trust.
2. Comply with what travelers are looking for. In addition, travelers have in mind a type of tour, which is available at a certain time, with the places they want to see and what they expect to find in your profile, …

To achieve this, we will show you how to improve each part of your profile, the most important being the reviews (and your answers!), and the main picture of your guruwalk.

Profile picture: what is the most trusted picture?

Travelers want to know who is going to lead the tour, see if you look professional and friendly. In addition, they will recognize you more easily at the meeting point. That’s why your profile picture has a very important role!

In this post, we explain all the secrets of the best profile picture, with examples of what needs to be done and what you shouldn’t do!

• The perfect profile picture
• Examples of profile pictures that we DO NOT recommend

The perfect profile picture

It is very simple. It must be a good photo of your face, showing that you’re having a good time. Although it is not ideal, you can cut a photo, to have it focus on you alone. In this case, you have to make sure you do not lose picture quality.

If you are someone funny or an extrovert, that will help a lot to show trust to travelers when booking. They know they will have a great time with you.

It’s a detail, but eyes transmit a lot of trust. That’s why we always advise showing your eyes in the picture. The same thing happens with a hat or anything that could not easily identify you.

 

Profile description: improve it to get more bookings!

The aim of the profile description (field ‘about you’) is very simple but essential: that travelers can get an idea of who you are and above all understand that you are the best to guide them in the city!

If you want to transmit more trust and receive more bookings, don’t miss the following tips.

In this post, we explain how to change the profile description.

• What we recommend
• What not to do
• Examples

What we recommend

Show that you are an expert on the topic of your guruwalk 

It might be shown through:

• Your studies: you studied / study a master’s degree in history, in art history, cooking classes if you do a gastronomic tour, …

• An accreditation: you are an official guide, …

• Your experience in the theme of your tour: you are an artist or you have worked with artists, you are part of a cultural association, you have worked in tourism, you are a historian, you wrote a book on the topic, you won a prize, it could be for personal issues, … Answer the question: why am I the best for this guruwalk?

• Your experience in doing tours: you’ve been doing guided tours for X years, or you usually show around to the people who come to visit you, you worked in coordination of events, in theater, with children, as a teacher, …

• Your experience of the city / country: If you have been in the city for a long time (min. a year, otherwise don’t mention it), walkers will understand that you know a lot about the place! If it’s the case, we also advise you to write that you lived in other parts of the country, or better, if you are from there.

• A personal story: you can come with fun facts about you related to the country or topic of your tour. An unusual story that will open travelers’ curiosity. However, don’t make it too long.

• The languages you speak: You aren’t a native of the language of your guruwalk? Don’t hesitate to explain why you speak this language so well (you lived before in a country where this language is spoken, you practice it daily, because of your origins, …). Don’t hesitate to put the other languages you speak, even if you don’t do the guruwalk in this language, or your nationality. It can make communication easier with travelers

Do it short

See how your profile description appears on the page of your tour. The ideal is that the ‘more’ does not appear, that all the information is directly available on the tour page.

Check grammar and spelling mistakes

What not to do

• Do not put personal data: It’s not allowed to put your social networks, phone number, email, etc. If you have not yet put the phone number in your profile, you can add it by clicking on ‘edit profile information’. It will not be public and will only be sent to the traveler when booking your guruwalk.
  
• Do not write things irrelevant to your experience or too personal.
  

Examples:

Christine, guru in Florence, Italy.

Arturo, guru in Stockholm, Sweden.

Vesna, guru in Dubrovnik, Croatia.

Magda, guru in Athens, Greece (long version).

Vlaho, guru in Dubrovnik, Croatia (long version).

Tour pictures: what are the ones that most attract travelers?

If you want to know how to take and retouch your tour pictures, we also recommend you to read this other complementary article.

You will see, you don’t need to take a picture on each tour, but just a few that are very good! If you don’t want to take pictures during your tour, no worries. You can always organize a photoshoot session with your friends 😉

• Cover photo
• Real case of cover photo
• Other tour pictures
• What is the right time to take tour pictures?
• Good examples

Cover photo

The cover photo is the most important of all. It’s the main picture of your tour, the one that appears on the page of your city. It’s this photo that will make travelers want to know more about your experience.

This picture must be a summary of your guruwalk: what could be the best way to represent it? And very important: it must sell! Travelers should not hesitate a second when booking your tour.

There are 4 main ingredients to consider for the perfect cover photo that result in more bookings: travelers + emblematic background + good experience + good picture

1. It should be a picture with travelers

Future travelers have much more confidence when they see that other travelers have already taken your tour. Moreover, they can imagine themselves in the place of these travelers doing the tour. 

• Normal group size. Try to put a photo of a group that has a size that you usually have, because that’s how travelers are going to imagine your guruwalk. You can create false expectations if you put a photo with a group of 5 people when almost all your groups are of 30 people.

• Type of travelers. The type of travelers you want to attract (families, couples, retirees, young people, …) should appear in your picture. Try not to show only one gender in the photo.

2. with the background of an emblematic place

Travelers have in mind some famous images of your city, even if they do not know it yet (ex: the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Colosseum in Rome …). When they book a guruwalk, they expect to see this place, so it encourages the traveler to click on your tour if they recognize it in your cover photo.

3. that shows a good experience

People go on vacation to have fun. The same goes for the tours, they look for an interesting but fun experience too, not a history class. That should also be reflected in the main picture of your tour.

• People laughing / smiling. It’s important to see that the travelers in the photo are having a good time, smiling or laughing.

• Good weather. Don’t put a picture of a rainy day or with many clouds. Depending on the season of the year, you could also put different pictures to be more faithful to the temperature (eg: a photo with travelers wearing t-shirt and flip flops is not sending a good information for a tour during the winter season).

4. and take a good picture

Although your photo has everything that we have already mentioned, it’s important to take it the right way, with a good resolution, a lot of light, not blurred, without exaggerated filters, etc.

It’s important to see the face of the people that appear in your picture. No one can transmit trust from the back.

In this post, we explain all the secrets to take and retouch the best tour pictures.

For the group picture, you can ask someone on the street to take it for you, although you never know how it will be taken. However, you appear in the photo, which is important too. 

Be creative with your cover photo

In most free tours, a boring group photo is taken where travelers barely gather. Why not taking the picture as part of the tour, as something fun? This way it will make travelers want to be on it, save it as a souvenir and then share it with their friends.

We’re going to give you many examples, but  possibilities are endless!

Another idea would be a photo according to a famous event of your city. For example, in Pamplona, bulls run on the streets in San Fermines. Why not take a picture with people running in front of the bullring?

Moreover, a good picture would be to base it on a legend or a story that you tell during the tour.

Is there a famous painting of your city? For example in Paris, travelers could pose as the Mona Lisa of Da Vinci.

Maybe a place you show was used in a famous movie. It could recreate the scene of the movie with your travelers. 

Real case of a cover photo

Then he changed the picture for another one, which shows a great time he had with travelers after the tour, but that has no relation with the tour itself: eating with travelers.

The conversion rate of his tour went down to 6%, just by changing the cover photo! Of course, there are many other factors that impact the conversion rate of your tour (number of tours available in your city, schedules, …) but as you can see, just changing the photo can already have a big impact!

Other tour pictures

The other pictures should be a mixture of the following:

• Group pictures, like the cover photo.

• Pictures of key monuments of your tour. The pictures of the places that travelers are going to see during your guruwalk are also very important. It allows them to see in advance the buildings, squares, streets, monuments etc … that they know if they book your experience. 

You can take them yourself (look carefully at the article we mentioned before to take good pictures). Otherwise, you can take public domain pictures, but they will be less personal. You can find them on sites like Pixabay, Pexels or Unsplash. Moreover, you can search on Google Images. You have to click on ‘Tools’ and select in ‘Usage rights’ the filter ‘labeled for reuse’.

Aerial pictures of your city could also be an attractive way to catch travelers’ attention. 

• Pictures during the tour. They can be pictures of you explaining, of you showing something, walking with your group, etc. Give life to your guruwalk.

What is the right time to take tour pictures?

We recommend to take the group picture only if you see that people are going to have a good time. If you have a less enthusiastic group, chances are it will also be reflected on the picture.   

• It is better to take the picture (almost) at the end of the tour, when the ice has already been broken and people are more relaxed.

• Take light also into account. If your guruwalk ends very late in the day, perhaps it will not be the best time to take it.

Good examples

• Andrea, guru in Barcelona, Spain
  

She did a photoshooting during a tour. You can see her explaining, focused, with the group, walking,… there is a great diversity of pictures as you can see below.

• Free Spirit Walking Tour in Zadar, Croatia.

The same as before, you can see the group during the tour, with lots of sun and perfect weather. You can even see the professionalism of the guide, showing something on the map to a traveler.

Other good examples:

• Mortour in Barcelona, Spain.
• EstAdventures in Tallinn, Estonia.
• Alicia in Trujillo, Spain.
  

Tour title: How to choose the best to get more bookings?

• What we recommend
  
• What not to write in your tour title
  

What we recommend:

• Always put the name of your city in the title.
  
• Write that it’s a tour. You can use the following terms: free tour, free walking tour, guided tour, tour, walking tour, guruwalk, walk, …
• The title should be attractive and opens the curiosity of the traveler. You can use superlatives (ex: that you can’t miss, visit, discover, secrets, the best of, wonders of, …).
• Get inspired by looking at other titles. But do not copy, otherwise you’ll not differentiate your tour from others. What is the most important part of your guruwalk? You can differentiate according to:
  • The neighborhood you show (eg: guided tour of the historic center, tour of the alternative district of Vienna, Florence through its viewpoints, through the Jewish quarter,…).
  • The topic (ex: Food tour, free bike tour, architectural, tour based on Games of Thrones, guided tour of Harry Potter, Renaissance walk,…).
  • The schedule (ex: guruwalk in Valencia by night, tour of the center at 11am, in the morning,…).
  • The duration (eg: the most emblematic of Valencia in 2h30).
  • For the language, only if nobody has put it before in your city.
  • Your profile (ex: city center tour with a local,…).
  • Your approach to doing the tour (the: fun tour of the old town, small group, curiosities and legends,…).
    

• Verify the automatic translation of the title into Spanish, even if you don’t speak it, because it will give you much more visibility on the platform!

What not to write in your tour title

• No vague/general titles that don’t give any information about your experience (Ex: the grand tour, a nice tour around the city, an interesting walk, free tour + city,…).
  
• Don’t put a brand or your name. It doesn’t add value to the traveler.
• Don’t write the words all in capital letters.
  

Tour description: What convinces travelers the most?

It’s so crucial to have the best tour description possible: it will bring you more bookings and will also draw a better picture of the reality of your tour, so that it matches travelers’ expectations. In this post, you will learn, step by step, how to write the best description of your guruwalk: let’s go!

• Structure and content
• Style and form
• What you can’t write in the tour description
• Example of a good tour description

If you don’t know how to get to the tour edition section, we made a post about it here. 

Structure and content

Try to write the description of your guruwalk with the following structure.

1. Introduce your tour

This part is the most important one. You must hook travelers to keep reading. You have to sell your tour, in just a paragraph.

Answer the following: Why is my tour the best in the city? What am I going to show to travelers or what am I going to tell them, and in which way?

Here you have to open the travelers’ curiosity.

Moreover, think about what travelers want from a tour and put it in your description.

Ex: we will go on a slow pace, without stress, we will have fun, with a small group, there will be time to take pictures, it will be a fun experience, this tour is designed for everyone (families and retired people included), they will have the best recommendations to know what do after the tour and where to go to eat …, etc.

Good introduction examples

Arthur in Kampala, Uganda.

Christine in Florence, Italy.

Donkey Tours in Barcelona, Spain.

2. List of places

After a good introduction, you should put the main stops of your guruwalk, so that travelers can get an idea of what they are going to see.

This list can indeed convince travelers to book as they could have these sites on their list of things to see in your city.

It’s not necessary to put all the stops (especially those that are less known). Otherwise, it can make the tour description very long.

To continue opening curiosity, do not hesitate to end with words like ‘and many more things / curiosities / surprises / hidden gems / places that only locals know’.

However, if you think you need to put more details, put them. This way travelers will have better expectations.

You can write everything in a text, although it’s easier to read with bullet points.

Example

Karla in Rome, Italy.

3. Invite travelers to join

After the list, you should continue selling your guruwalk. To close the tour description, we advise you to invite travelers to join the tour using one of the following formulas:

• “See you soon in X!”
• “Looking forward to meeting for you here in X”
• “Can’t wait to show you…”
• “Don’t miss this amazing opportunity to know… ”
• “If you want to learn and have fun in X, this guruwalk is for you!”
• “Join my tour and discover what…”
• …

4. Additional details

In most cases, you don’t need to put anything after the third point. Don’t forget that the goal of the description is to sell! We recommend to put all additional details, that don’t help that goal (Recommended shoes / clothes,…) in the automatic welcome message that is sent once the booking is done. However sometimes, depending on your tour or your city, you have to specify some more details.

• If you have to pay something extra: a transport, a museum ticket, a meal, … You must mention it and put the price of everything.

• Put YouTube videos. People like it very much! It has a great impact on travelers to see images and videos of the tour. In addition, Google likes to provide value to the user, and it will help your tour to rank better.

Example of Agora, in Palermo

 

Style and form

You already did the most important thing, but some details are missing in order to get the most convincing tour’s description.

Shape

• The description should be easy to read. Forget large blocks of texts and think about small paragraphs of 4 lines maximum. It should be short, otherwise travelers are not going to read it. However, make sure to add all relevant information.

• Do not hesitate to vary the words you use. Instead of always writing ‘tour’, use also ‘guided tour’, ‘walk’, ‘free tour’, ‘free walking tour’, …

• The tour description must be grammatically correct. Your experience can lose all its credibility with just a little misspelling. We invite you to read it several times to make sure that everything is correct.

• To give more life to your description, you can use symbols. In this web, you only have to copy and then paste the symbol in your text. However, be careful with the use of symbols! Your tour description should always look professional.

• Verify the automatic translation of your text into Spanish. It’s always better to check it as the translator is not always perfect. It will give you more visibility.

Style

You already know it. The description should be attractive, make travelers want to book your guruwalk. Travelers should feel your enthusiasm and your passion reading your tour description and be curious to know more.

What you can’t write in the tour description

• Do not explain what a free tour is, we already explain it. If you look at the page of your guruwalk, you will see a grey box with the explanation ‘What’s the price?’.
  
• Do not write that the tour is free. Do not downgrade your work. The tours of GuruWalk are ‘free to give what travelers want’, but not ‘free of charge’. If you advertise that your guruwalk is free of charge, it goes against the grey box mentioned earlier. You will also attract the kind of people who will pay you the least.
• Do not put a time in advance to book. Example: “you can’t book 6h before the tour starts”  is not allowed. In the case that you can’t do the tour, you just have to block the date in the calendar.

• Do not copy/paste. Be original. If you copy and paste you are not adapting the content to the user of GuruWalk, and it will lower your conversion. In addition, your tour will not be positioned on Google because the duplicate content is ignored by the search engines.

• Do not put links (TripAdvisor, etc), although you can recommend another of your tours at the end of the description.

Example of a good tour description

A good example is the tour’s description of Krakow Explorers, in Krakow, Poland. In this case, they didn’t write the list of monuments but they include what travelers are going to discover, which is good too. However, they could have write more names of famous places/monuments.

This description opens curiosity, and is very attractive. It could maybe be a bit longer and have a finish line to invite the traveler to join the guruwalk.

Another good example, shorter and more personal, is the description of Arturo‘s tour in Stockholm, Sweden. It makes you want to book his tour directly, and discover this surprise that he prepared us!

 

• Earn more money and look more professional!
• How to choose the perfect meeting point?
• How to help travelers find you easily?
• How to edit the meeting point on the platform?
• Take advantage of the meeting point
  

If your meeting point is difficult to find, travelers might come late, which can delay your tour and look unprofessional. Moreover, travelers may also never reach the starting point, and in this case, you’re losing money.

How to choose the perfect meeting point?

You will have the perfect meeting point if it’s:

• Close. Think about where most travelers stay in your city, and try to make the meeting point close to this area.

• Accessible. It must be easy to get to the meeting point by using public transport (bus, subway,…) or by walking.

• Famous. It’s always easier to find a famous place that’s popular with tourists. This way, the hotel or normal people walking in the street can also help travelers get oriented better on how to reach your meeting point. 

• Easily recognizable. Maybe there are many people at your meeting point, so it could be difficult to find you. When specifying the meeting point, think about the first thing that can be seen at your meeting point. It will help a lot of travelers. It can be a big clock, a tower, a McDonald’s, the tourist office, etc.

• Adapted to the weather. No one likes to wait in the rain or in bright sunlight during summer. That’s why it’s best to choose a meeting point that avoid these scenarios or that allows you to move only a few meters from that spot to get some shelter.

• Specific. You can take an example of a good meeting point from other gurus, but it’s important that at the time of your tour, you are the only one that travelers can find there. If there are other gurus, other groups, travelers can get confused and go with someone else…

• In the upper part of your tour itinerary. If you start in the upper part of your city, then it will be much easier for your group to walk down than the opposite. Travelers end up less tired and you go faster.

How to help travelers find you easily?

• Have a distinctive element. You can carry an umbrella, wear a colorful scarf, a backpack, a “free walking tour” flag, glasses, cap, … It must be something special and that you always have with you, no matter the weather or the season. If you want to make an umbrella and T-shirts with the GuruWalk logo, you can download here the logo picture in high quality.
  

 Example of a guru in Athens

 Example of a guru in Athens

• Give recommendations before the tour. It can be in your welcome message when travelers book your guruwalk, and / or in your reminder message a few days before the tour. These are some of the things you could send:
  • Day and time of the booking;
  • Google Maps link of the meeting point (shortlink recommended);
  • Pictures of the meeting point;
  • Video of the starting point and how to get there;
  • Distinctive element; 
  • How to reach the meeting point, how to buy public transport tickets, prices, etc.
  • Your phone number (WhatsApp,…); 
  • Writing that it is important to arrive on time, what happens if you are late, …
  • …

• Use a good profile picture. It will be easier to recognize your face.

• Be the first at the meeting point. We recommend for you to be there at least 15 minutes before the tour starts, which is when the first travelers start arriving. If they don’t see you at the starting point, travelers could be confused and think they are at the wrong place, which can create a bad experience.

• Be accessible. While you wait for the travelers, you should look like you are waiting for them and not seem busy, looking at your mobile phone, listening to music, reading,… Otherwise, travelers may get the wrong impression or have a bad image of you or just think that you are not their guru.

• Recognize your travelers. The best gurus look for their travelers at the meeting point. If you see people who seem lost, looking at something on their mobile phone, it’s for sure your travelers looking at their booking details to find you!

• Ask travelers. Ask those who came to the tour: “Was it easy to get there? If not, why?” In addition, ask also those who didn’t show up: “Did you get lost on the way?” This way you will get their feedback and prevent it from happening again.

• Have only one meeting point. If you have several tours, we advise you to choose the same meeting point, if possible. As a result, you make it easier when you invite travelers to join your other tours.

How to edit the meeting point on the platform?

Take advantage of the meeting point

• Get more travelers on your way to the tour.
  

Why not explain to them a little about your activity?

You can leave flyers and posters and say that you will come at that time to pick up travelers at the hotel reception. For the hotel, it’s great because it gives them one more activity to offer to its clients without having to organize anything. If the hotel is very cooperative, it will even let you know if it has people interested in your tour (this way you can organize your time better). Otherwise, you can always offer them an incentive such as a small commission for every traveler that comes from the hotel.

• Get more travelers at the meeting point.

As we said, the best starting points are the more touristic places in your city. These are the perfect spots to attract more travelers on your tour. Therefore, be there 30 minutes before with an umbrella or a flag inviting travelers to join, and intrigued travelers will ask you more about the ‘free walking tour’.

In addition, if you choose the same meeting point as a big free walking tour agency, but do the tour 30 minutes after them, you could also welcome the travelers who booked the tour of the agency but who were late and didn’t end up joining the tour.

Tour schedule: when to get most travelers?

You can do the best tour in the world, but if it is not available when travelers want, they will not book it. Discover in this post how to choose the best tour schedule !

• Best days of the week
• Best hours of the day
  

Best days of the week

The days that travelers use to book the most are usually on weekends, from Thursday to Sunday. However, if you offer more days, you will have more bookings.

Adapt your tour schedule

• Other tours in your city. If you are the only one to offer tours on Tuesday, travelers will have no choice but to book your guruwalk if they are in your city only that day.

• Events of your city. Is there a famous event in your city that attracts many tourists? Maybe it would be interesting to do your tour during a few extra days on this event. 

• Holiday periods. Easter, Christmas,… Holidays are best moments to travel. Try to identify where your travelers come from and identify these vacation days in their country. If necessary, open one or more days during that period. 
  

Best hours

There are no secrets, more schedules you offer, more bookings you have. However, the best hours are usually in the morning, between 10:00 and 11:00.

Travelers want to take advantage of the tour to have a quick overview of the city and then decide what to do next. In this case, travelers have not yet walked much and have enough energy to pay attention to your tour, resulting in a better experience and more tips.

Forget to do a tour that would start just before or after lunch (between 12:00 and 15:00). Although travelers decide to join, they will not have a good experience because they will be hungry or they will be asleep due to the digestion of their lunch. Of course, if it’s a food tour, it’s the opposite.

The second best time would be after lunch, between 15:00 and 17:00, depending on whether you do the tour in English or Spanish.

• Think of the nationalities of your travelers. For example, Spaniards usually eat at 14:00 pm while English people eat at 12:00. This difference also impacts the schedule of your guruwalk.

• Think of the other tours of your city. Try to have a different schedule. Moreover, if you have the same meeting point as another guru, you can put your tour half an hour later to get the travelers who arrived late to the other guru’s tour.

• Think of what could give value to your tour. For example, in Athens or London, you could start the tour at a certain time to include the changing of the guard.

• Think about the schedules of the sites of your guruwalk. For example, in Valencia, it’s better to do the tour in the morning because it’s when the central market is open, which is a mandatory stop for travelers. Maybe there are also some churches or monuments that are free to access during a few hours each day. All that adds value to your experience.

Think about the arrival times of travelers

As we said, people usually take the guruwalk as the first activity in the city. Look at the flight / bus / train / cruise schedules arriving in your city, to know when travelers arrive and what destination they come from.

When you have this moment identified, add one or two hours more (to leave them the time to get to your hotel and go to the meeting point) and you have the time of your guruwalk.

For example, in Dubrovnik, several gurus offer their tour very early (07:00 a.m. and 08:45 a.m.). Travelers indeed arrive on cruise ships very early in the morning.

Think of the weather to define the tour schedule

Many gurus adapt their schedule according to the weather of the time of the year. Even if you do the best tour, you will receive less money due to cold or heat.

• In summer, avoid hot moments. Think of tours that start earlier in the morning and later in the afternoon.
• In winter, do the opposite. Avoid the coldest moments. Delay your morning tour a little and put your afternoon schedule a little ahead.

Reviews: How to get 5-stars (+ how to deal with bad ones)

Getting more reviews will bring you more travelers and thus more money. But how to make sure travelers will leave a review after your guruwalk and also how to avoid and deal with a bad review on your profile? We gathered the best tips and techniques in this post! Enjoy!

• Why getting 5-star reviews matters?
• How to easily get the 10 first reviews?
• How to get more 5-stars reviews?
• Your answer matters more than the review
• Bad reviews are a huge opportunity, not a problem
• How to avoid the typical bad reviews?

Why getting 5-star reviews matters?

It’s crucial to get as many 5-star reviews as possible on your profile, for two main reasons

1. Right now, it’s one of the factors of ranking for a tour in the page of your city on GuruWalk. It’s not the most important but it helps to rank better on the page of your city and this way you will have more bookings.
   
2. Trust. As you can read in this study, most online users trust online reviews as much as a friend’s recommendation. Do you see the potential? The more positive reviews you’ll get, the more trust you’ll transmit to future travelers, and thus the more bookings you’ll get.
   

How to easily get the 10 first reviews?

If you are just getting started on GuruWalk, it’s very important to quickly get your first 5-star reviews. But these ones are often the most complicated to get as you might not rank well on your GuruWalk’s city page and don’t inspire enough trust.

Why not asking friends or travelers to join your guruwalk for free? This way they could give you the first reviews and also valuable feedback on how to improve your experience. A great way to show their support for your new activity!

But of course, as these reviews are not totally objective, friend’s reviews are only allowed to get the 10 first reviews on your profile, not after.

Why not asking other gurus of your city to join your guruwalk for free? They will give you for sure very good ideas to keep improving and a good review. In addition, they can recommend your tour to their travelers!

How to get more 5-stars reviews?

At GuruWalk, we’re already helping you to get more 5-star reviews. After each tour, we send an automatic email inviting the walker to write a review on your profile, as you can see in the picture below.

Moreover, we send, not one, but two reminder emails! But sometimes, it’s just not enough. It’s so easy to delete an email. So here are some techniques you can use to get more reviews:  

1. Explaining the importance of reviews at the end of the tour

At the end of the tour, you should always include a part about the review in your closing speech. Travelers don’t always know that it’s so important, so it’s great to mention it.

According to your personality, you can explain it in different ways:

The professional way

“After the tour, you’ll receive an email inviting you to leave a review. And that’s very important because it’s currently the first ranking factor on the platform. So if you want to support me and have more travelers enjoying this amazing walk with me, you know what to do. Thank you so much.”

The funny way

• Exaggerating:

“After the tour, you’ll receive an email inviting you to leave a review. If you had the best time of your life, just open this email and put 5 stars, or 100! But please, not 3 or 4! Better delete the email haha.”

• Cute:

“In the next hours, you’ll receive an email inviting you to write a review about the tour. My mom loves to see my reviews and she feels so proud of her son/daughter. So please, if you want to make my mom happy, you know what to do.”

• Playing on the name:

“After the tour, you’ll receive an email inviting you to leave a review. So remember, if you had a great time, my name is X. But if you had the worst time of your life, my name is X. It’s another guide on the platform and he/she will be so happy to see your review.”

2. Giving a card at the end of the tour

Most free tour agencies give a business card to travelers at the end of the tour, with the name of the guide and the website link where they can give a review.

It could be a business card, but also a personalized map etc. Be creative!

Instead of the link, it could also be a QR code of the link to give a review. This way, you could have just one card to share among travelers that could access it easily.   

If you prefer the link option, think about shortening the URL address of the link. It will be easier for travelers to write it. There are many tools to do it, such as Bitly.

3. Share a tablet or your mobile phone

If you trust your travelers, what you can do is to share your mobile phone with the link to write a review. It’s a great way if travelers don’t have data on their phones.

4. The excuse of the group picture

Most tour agencies take a picture with travelers during their tours and send a message with this picture. It could be through the platform (with a link of Google Drive, Facebook etc) or through WhatsApp.

This message is a great opportunity to remind travelers to write a review on your profile. Make it easy, by putting the (short) link directly in the message. But of course, do it only with travelers that didn’t leave you a review, because it could be a little too much for the ones who already wrote it.

Your answer matters more than the review

On GuruWalk, you can answer the reviews given by travelers and we strongly recommend you to do so. Indeed, future travelers care more about your answer than the review itself.

If they see that you reply to travelers’ reviews, they will think that you are active on the platform, that you will quickly answer their questions, solve their doubts etc. Moreover, replying to reviews show that you act as a professional and that you care about the travelers on your tours (you read and take into account what travelers say).

It generates more trust and thus more bookings.

Bad reviews are a huge opportunity, not a problem

So you just got a bad review? Act as a professional, take it into account to improve your guruwalk and experience and answer it!

It’s important to answer a positive review, but it’s even more important if it’s a negative one. Otherwise, travelers will think the topic remained unsolved and that it could happen to them too! So even if you privately fixed the issue with the traveler, you should always make clear to future travelers that you took the necessary measures by replying the review.

So here you have what your answer should look like:

1. Thank the traveler. He/She took the time to write it to you and to be honest about how he/she felt with regards to your experience.
2. Explain how the issue is now solved for the next tours. Be fun and serious at the same time. And make clear the traveler is not responsible for this situation, even if you don’t feel this way. That’s how travelers will see you are a professional.

If you feel the review was completely unfair or a lie (a fake review, about another tour, etc.), talk to us first and we may consider deleting the review.

How to avoid the typical bad reviews?

Most bad reviews are a result of a no-show or because you didn’t properly cancel a booking. And these can easily be avoided.

1. No show reviews

This review was made by a traveler that was on the meeting point but you didn’t show up. It may be because you were not available or because the traveler did a very last minute booking and you didn’t see it. To avoid such situations to happen, we strongly encourage you to block the day you’re not available or if you know you’ll not be on time for the last minute booking.

To do so, just go on your tour page and click on ‘block events’. There, just click on ‘block’ on a specific schedule and when it appears as ‘click to reopen event’, it means it’s not available for booking anymore. Watch out, you should block for each language of your guruwalk.

2. Cancelation review

Imagine you’re a traveler and you got your booking canceled? You may be frustrated or disappointed. And when you receive the automatic email asking for a review, well, you might write something bad.

To avoid such situation, you should always cancel the booking on the platform. This way, our system knows that the tour didn’t happen and will not send an automatic message to invite travelers to write a review. Moreover, our system will send an automatic cancelation email. To do so, you just have to go to ‘Bookings’ and then click on ‘cancel the booking’.

But of course, we also recommend you to cancel in advance, with a private and personal message, explaining why the tour will not happen and offering an alternative to the traveler (another tour before/after, another guru, recommendations etc.).

BONUS: Tour pictures: how to take and retouch the best ones?

Take the best tour pictures with your smartphone and this tutorial!

80% of travelers booking on GuruWalk say that pictures are a key element to choose among guruwalks of the same city.

Tour pictures are indeed the first thing travellers are looking at. If they like them, they will continue reading the description to know more about your experience.

In this post, we explain you how to take and retouch the best pictures of your guruwalk, without the need for expensive camera, or the service of a photographer. If you want to know more about the types of tour pictures that generate more bookings and have new ideas, we recommend this complementary article.

 Retouched picture of a guruwalk

 

Adjust your camera to get the most of it

To set up your camera like a pro you only have to follow the following steps:

• Activate the grid. It will allow you to focus your photos much better and take advantage of your smartphone to take good tour pictures.

It’s different for Iphone and Android model:

• If you have an Iphone, just enter in “Settings” and then “Camera and Photos”. Here you will find the option to activate the grid.
• With Android you may see a grid symbol below the screen. You just have to press it and it will be activated.

Top Tip: Try to have the center of the travellers’ group in the central square of your screen. This way the picture will be very well focused.

• Turn off the flash. On all smartphones you will see an icon with a lightning bolt in the upper left corner of your screen. Press on it to deactivate the flash.

• Change the mode. There are several modes to take the picture but we recommend to activate the “Photo” mode. You will increase much more your camera’s potential and you will get better results.

• Activate the option to shoot in burst mode. Sometimes, with a single shot, someone in the group may have his/her eyes closed or making an unexpected movement.

Position to take tour pictures

We already put the right settings of the camera. Now we must center the image and have the right position to take the picture.

To do so, hold your smartphone horizontally and as straight as possible.

Never take pictures above your head, in the case you would like to take more space, and never hold the mobile with strange angles. The best photos are those that are well focused.

Top Tip: If you need to crouch down to make the image focused and centered with all your travellers, do it ! Results will be incredible.

Lighting is the difference of a good picture

Lighting could be called the key to success. It represents the difference for travellers between an attractive picture or an ugly one.

Adding brightness makes your tour pictures look more beautiful and attractive to attract the maximum amount of travellers.

To have the perfect lighting, it’s necessary to always take pictures during day-time with the maximum of sunlight. Moreover, there are tricks you can use with your smartphone.

Never take the photo against the light as it will dazzle the camera of your mobile and you will not see the image. Too much light is also a problem, so never take pictures backlighting.

Top Tip: On all smartphones there is the option to touch the screen while taking the picture. Just touch different parts of the screen with the index finger so that the device finds the ideal light. Once found, you can take the perfect picture.

Add filters to create amazing tour pictures

Once you took the tour pictures, we recommend you to use filters to make them more attractive to the traveler.

All smartphones have an option to put different filters to the pictures you took.

You simply have to enter the image you took and go to the filters option. On both Iphone and Android, you find three horizontal stripes with some dots in the middle, which are located at the bottom of your screen.

Press it and you can change and retouch your photo quickly, adjust the lighting, the angle, crop the image, …

If you don’t have time for all the details, you can access the automatic retouching, represented with a magic wand icon. If you press the icon, saturation, contrast and exposure of the photo will be adjusted.

Here you can see the difference between two tour pictures.

The first below is a good picture with good quality but is not very bright as it was taken in the afternoon.

But we can fix it and make it better!

 Original picture

We just adjusted it by raising the picture’s brightness and the saturation of colors.

The magic of the filters!

 

Retouched picture

Use all of these tips and you’ll get great and incredible pictures for your guruwalk. But the best of all, you’ll be able to increase travellers’ bookings!