Why don't I do free tours? Because I'm a professional, trained tour guide

​I don’t do free tours because I'm a professional. 

I also don't do them because so called ‘free’ tours aren’t free. They are in effect distortions of an obvious truth. Guides, often unqualified, on ‘free’ tours expect to be PAID in tips. Often these guides are members of companies such as Guru Walks or Sandemans who extract fees from their members, run offices, employ staff, do the marketing. The bosses of these type of companies are raking money in living on ‘free’ guides charging nothing. That's a clever a magic trick isn't it? But magic is all it is because making money from 'free' activities should be impossible and clearly a nonsense. Chris Sandeman is a multi-millionaire on the basis of 'free' tours. That's mind-bending.  

So why are 'free tours' a con?

Easy. It’s because there is an understanding guests will pay, it does not matter whether a guest pays 50p or £50, there is an understanding they will pay so, ergo, the tours are not ‘free’ from the very moment of promotion. 

‘Free’ tour guides can argue until they are blue in the face that there is no compulsion for guests on the tour to pay anything. True. However, when every one of these ‘free’ tour guides ‘suggests’ to guests at the end of the tour (and the beginning and in the middle) if they could show their gratitude by a monetary payment then they are exerting a moral compulsion. It is not a proper commercial transaction of contract and delivery. What the guides are saying is I have provided this service for you so it would be honourable for you to reward me and dishonourable not to reward me even though I described the tour as ‘free’. The unspoken element here is them saying, "Why would I be doing tours if I wasn't going to get any money?"

So it is obviously the case ‘free’ tour guides expect a reward because they wouldn’t continue to conduct ‘free’ tours if they didn’t receive money.

The argument, the excuse, I’ve heard for ‘free’ tours is that they allow people on lower incomes to access tours. Really? The last thing ‘free’ tour guides want is to receive 20p for a tour, they of course want the biggest tips possible. They want the rich pickings. So Manchester, London, Edinburgh and so on in the UK are fine, other places not so fine. I've not seen free tours taking place in my home town of Rochdale yet, or Stockport, or Oldham or Blackburn so people on lower incomes in those places, often economically deprived, can learn about their towns. 

The 'free' tour guides will say, there isn't a market there. They are wrong. I know lots of local people would turn up but the tips would be much reduced in comparison to the big cities. 'Free' tours are not a charity. Ask Chris Sandeman. 

I do paid for, ticketed, tours in Rochdale, Stockport, Whalley Range, Littleborough and many places across Greater Manchester which the 'free' guides of course won't touch. People pay to attend them. 

The poison of 'free' tours spreads. Recently I received an enquiry from a company in the financial sector about whether I could do a tour. Of course I said. They then asked if it would be ‘free’ as they had seen such tours around Manchester: "Staff can pay what they think appropriate at the end," the enquirer said.

I said: “I don’t conduct free tours. There’s always fee unless it’s for charity. This is a specialist job. I have clocked up years of experience and research. I don’t think you would offer your professional services for free on the assumption the client would give you a tip.”

There was a laugh down the line: “God no," came the reply, "That’s no way to run a business. But this seems to be your industry standard."

I told him it wasn't and we agreed a fee.

The whole transaction was so absurd it was sort of amusing. It was also unsettling. It is not good that some people are beginning to think ‘free tours’ are 'the industry standard'. For professional guides this is a job, not some work between jobs, or a job for a student trying to make some extra cash. It’s a proper job. We perform and inform, we combine the skills of an actor with those of a tutor and it’s the best job in the world because you meet the world.

Let me emphasise: we are professional. Blue and Green badge tour guides have all had to pay a fee for a training course, they’ve had to gain ‘the knowledge’, they’ve spent countless hours researching material and creating routes. This is worth something and we are open and upfront about the ticket prices on tours.

I’m not saying I have better knowledge than ‘free’ tour guides although I probably do. I am definitely saying that through proper training I present better: the way some 'free' guides in Manchester slouch and lean against walls is irritating. Still, having the knowledge is not the point, it's the con of calling the tours 'free' that's the bone of contention. 

A comparable sector is, perhaps, hospitality.

Restaurants like us to tip their staff based on service but we are expected to pay for the food. They wouldn’t tolerate us paying £2 for a Sunday roast just because we could, we must pay the price on the menu. There were experiments with restaurants some years ago where the customer was asked to pay what they thought according to the quality of service and food. Those experiments deflated faster than a badly timed souffle.  

Simply put: NO other trade offers its services for free. Only ‘free’ tour guides. Plumbers no, academics no, doctors no, road cleaners no, accountants definitely no.  

Tours guides shouldn't do so either. Free tours are demeaning to the guide and a tactic that undermines the professionalism of the sector. We are not buskers.