Whereas they were only available in a few cities until recently, free walking tours are now spreading rapidly across all continents and cities where there is tourism. Its modality of "pay-what-you-want" at the end of the tour is now extending to new experiences, far from the typical guided tour.

1. A large and growing market

With the democratization of travel, there is a new demand for free-paid experiences from travelers who were not used to or had not even considered booking paid tours.

For this reason, many professionals in the sector have decided to offer free walking tours for having access to this new demand. This leth them combine free walking tours with other paid-in-advance excursions that have separate costs (paid tours, experiences that include transportation and/or food etc) and in this way they are able to cover more parts of the tourist market.

2. Free to join = power of attraction

On a free walking tour/experience, anyone can join without paying anything in advance and decide how much to pay at the end of the tour, depending on how their experience has been. This is very appealing and allows you to attract larger groups of people who, in addition, usually pay the same (or more) than for a fixed payment experience.

This fact, added to the opportunity to be able to sell other fixed payment experiences to this type of travelers, makes the free tour a very profitable model.

3. An entertaining experience

Taking this kind of experience is a guarantee for an entertaining experience and this is one of the main reasons for its success. The guides make a great effort so that the group lives a great experience that is later reflected in a more generous payment.

Misconceptions about free walking tours:

• Free walking tours are free of charge. GuruWalk tours are not free, and we make sure that each of the travelers who book through our platform know it. The word “free” can be understood as “free of charge”, but in this context it must be considered in the sense of “freedom”: freedom for participants to paid, at the final part of the tour, an amount of money according to the experience lived during the itinerary.

• Guides receive tips or donations. Even if there are still many advertising it this way, we don’t do it at GuruWalk. At GuruWalk we value the work of each of our collaborating guides and that is why we do not talk about tips or donations, but about fair payment.

• The free walking tour guides are amateurs. Although initially the free tour model was born from the initiative of amateur guides who wanted to share their experiences in their cities with tourists, today the reality is very different. Being aware of the success of free tours, more and more professionals in the sector are committed to diversifying their business with these free tour experiences. Thanks to this, travelers today associate the free tour with a professional experience like any other paid experience.
  
  In addition, from GuruWalk we support this professionalization by controlling all the opinions left by the assistants of our free tours, as well as giving support to our guides whenever they need it in order to help them to grow professionally.

• Free walking tour guides evade taxes. Free tour guides have to comply with local regulations, both in terms of licensing and taxation, and any other legal requirement, just like any other guide. In this sense, GuruWalk facilitates on its platform access to the invoices generated by the credits acquired (number of walkers) so that they can be computed as a tax-deductible expense and carry out the appropriate tax procedures.