
Apply HN: OrderTrip – Crowdsourcing local people as private tour guide - keioka
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ordertrip.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ordertrip.com&#x2F;</a><p>Lets travelers crowdsource locals as tour guides. Travelers can post their itineraries and budgets on OrderTrip and a list of locals willing to help them are provided. Travelers then choose their guides and they pay for the guide after their tour is completed.<p>Instead of travelers choosing from a prescribed list of guides, the guides choose them. This helps ensure the person leading them around is familiar with what travelers want to see and do versus a tour guide who must show several spots along an itinerary but doesn’t have deep knowledge of that one spot a traveler really wants to know more about. Paying after the tour is over always offers an extra level of comfort too.
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soneca
I like the idea of "anyone can be a tour guide" as a gig economy company. But
my experience is that professional, fulltime guides are much better guides
within the arguments you made. Specially about deep knowledge about specific
spots. What made you think otherwise?

Your benefits look much more like group tour vs personal tour (not pro guide
vs local guide). Wouldnt this be your value proposition?

And assuming you have a local, personal guide and people want it. How do you
train these guides? How do ensure their quality?

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keioka
First of all, thank you for your comment and feedback. I appreciate it.

> But my experience is that professional, fulltime guides are much better
> guides within the arguments you made. Especially about deep knowledge about
> specific spots. What made you think otherwise?

Giving just the general knowledge of placs is less value because travelers can
get information through google or Wikipedia.

What if a professor of History can be a guide, what if food blogger became a
guide. These "nerd" people (positive meaning) can be a really good guide for
some travelers.

I am sure they can have deeper knowledge. Moreover, you will get as many
offers as possible from locals so that you can pick up the best guide.

Moreover, we are considering that the value of guide is not only deep
knowledge. The guide's profile such as personality, job background, and
interests are also important.

I don't remember "Guide" but people who I met and have great conversations. We
believe that it is the main value.

In terms of value proposition, generally group tour vs personal tour but
narrower value proposition is pro guide vs local guide. Moreover reservation
vs crowdsourcing. Nobody does crowdsourcing personal local tour guide.

> How do you train these guides? How do ensure their quality?

At the beginning, we have to define what is the quality of guides for
travelers.

I don't think giving knowledge is not main quality (or value) on our website.
As I said, I believe that type of guide is less value these day. We will not
train guides but advise them just to be polite and on time. I would like guide
to show their own knowledge and perspective and traveler will review it.

Sorry for bad writing. I have to code Thank you again for your comment.

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akg_67
You most probably have decent chance with just being "AirBnB of tour guides"
where Tour Guides are hosts and travelers visiting the town are guests. Like
AirBnB, host guide showcases his preferred tourist spots in listing and
traveler decide whether to book them. The quality is maintained through mutual
reviews. You take a cut from traveler's payment and transfer rest to guide.
The travelers pays in advance to you, a comfort to guide about no-shows and
need to overbook.

Keep it a simple straightforward, easy to understand system. A decent
extension to AirBnB lodging business and most probably your exit strategy.

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ksherlock
Some cities (Washington DC, Philadelphia, New York, New Orleans, etc) have
licensing and testing requirements for tour guides. Will you verify tour
guides are licensed, if required? Exclude those cities? Disrupt?

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vit05
I have a friend that have an app that does something similar, the name is
PartyWith a local

So I have help him research for similars and found this.

couch surfing, TravelMate, tournative.com, toursbylocals.com, moneysense,
toursbylocals.com.

What I found is that families seem more willing to pay for a service like
this, than young.

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buss
I think something like this is needed, but I question the need for an actual
tour guide.

What if I wanted to go to Vancouver and I wanted a walking tour with some
great food and drinks, with some idle time spent at a couple parks or walking
around a museum? That's a pretty typical ask and something I'd gladly pay $10
for in order to just get a list of things to visit in a sensible order (so I
can just walk along a set path from place to place). As a local of Vancouver I
could create my own "poutine, cocktails, and parks" guide, post it, and get
some commission every time its sold.

How will you recruit guides?

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d--b
This is a good idea, however you will have crazy safety problems here. What
would prevent your "guide" to fake stumbling upon pickpockets or worse. I
surely wouldn't hire anyone who is not certified one way or another.

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yanglang
How do you make money? What prevents the local contact travelers privately,
bypassing your platform?

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keioka
> How do you make money? We will take a commission model like Airbnb.

> What prevents the local contact travelers privately, bypassing your
> platform?

We will scan the part of messages such as URL and Email not to navigate the
other URL. However, reviews and tour guide records are more important to get
reliability and customers for them. If they navigate to their own website or
contact privately, they can not use review system which means they have not
done any tour guide previously. Obviously, we need to consider more the way to
prevent the situation like this.

Thank you for your comment, yanglang.

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emmasz
Hey! I'd love to sign up as a tour guide. Can I?

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kumarski
Have you looked at vayable.com?

