Tours by Locals: Make Money Guiding Local Tours

What is Tours by Locals?

Tours by Locals is a marketplace that connects independent tour guides with travelers, who want to book a private tour.

How it works

Guides are invited to apply to list their tours on the site.

You’ll fill out an application that talks about your experience, whether you’re licensed, where you operate, etc.

The site then evaluates your application based on whether it needs guides in your market. And whether other guides in your market already provide tours like yours.

If you’re accepted, you will sign a guide agreement and list your profile and tours on the site. You set the prices. The site books consumers, collects payment and takes a commission on each sale.

Tours by Locals Review:

Tours by Locals allows you to create and price a tour of your town that’s designed to fit your interests and skills. You can, for instance, design a food tour; a hiking exploration; a historic tour. You name it.

Potential tour guides set the itinerary and price, based on the amount of time your tour is likely to take, your expenses and the profit margin you want to earn. You also determine how many people can participate in each tour.

Tours by Locals rejects new tour guide applicants if they are offering tours that would compete with tours offered by existing guides. Thus, if you design a tour that’s unique, it’s likely to remain unique here.

In their words: “We are committed to the success of our Tour Guides. Therefore, we may not accept additional Tour Guides in a particular area if we feel that the demand is satisfied by existing Tour Guides.” That’s a big plus and a differentiating factor between this site and competing sites, such as Viator and WithLocals.

Local only

Notably, too, this is not a place to advertise your ability to take a group to a foreign land. As the name implies, tours by locals arranges tours by local guides only.

You are not allowed to offer tours in an area that is not local to where you live and work.

Site migration disaster

This site was among the most highly-rated for tour guides, until Tours by Locals decided to redesign its website in the summer of 2024. That redesign appeared to break the booking system. Now guides complain that they’re not getting notified when consumers try to book their tours. And tourists complain that trying to reach a guide is all but impossible.

We expect the site to work out these kinks. After all, failing to do so would ruin the business. However, for now, it’s a bit of a mess.

Commissions and fees

Guides pay nothing to sign up and there are no recurring fees for listing your services on the site.

However, if your tours book, the site will take a commission out of your earnings.

The site usually takes 20% – 25% off the top. However, the site’s guide contract says that Tours by Local’s commission rate is established on a guide-by-guide basis when you sign your guide agreement. In other words, this standard commission rate may vary.

Pay

Guides are paid weekly and can choose among a variety of different payment services, from direct deposit to Payoneer.

Recommendations

Thousands of tourists have raved about guides they’ve found on this site. And Tours by Local’s contract is worker-friendly. But the site redesign spurred a litany of practical issues that have yet to be fully addressed. Since there’s no cost to list a tour here, we suggest you apply.  You can sign up with Tours by Locals here.

But we wouldn’t suggest you rely on this site until it gets its digital act together. Other sites where you can list local tours include Viator, WithLocals and GetYourGuide.

What their guides say (from Reddit):

I *was* a long-time TBL loyal user until the website re-do disaster. Apparently TBL is treating this calamity like deers in headlights, which is to say, zero communication, no apologies, no updates, nadda. Who knows when the website will be fixed, but in the meantime TBL can’t be trusted.

The switch over was the most poorly handled thing I have ever seen in business. As a guide, it was unbelievable. I felt terrible for all the guides and also the customers. I had to cancel a tour for a client, and it took 4 weeks to get a response from the staff at Tours By Locals. Everything is in such a state of shambles there is simply no one to help in a timely manner. I don’t see how they can survive this financially- no bookings, missed bookings etc. I pulled all of my tours off their website last week and will just work with Viator and Get Your Guide in the future.

No way to book

There is no way to book or communicate with anyone. I feel so bad for these tour guides if this is there soul form of survival.

This is unreal! I feel for my valued travel friends trying to make a living and tell you if I hadn’t used this before I wouldn’t even try again.

Hey, this is only my second season with Tours by Locals. So far experience has been great but I can agree launch of new web site has been disaster. Hasn’t receive any inquiry or reservation for a month at least. Hope for a quick and positive change!

Heaven help us

As a guide I was getting regular business until they migrated this new site. I recently logged in to discover I had a booking to which I was never notified. And I don’t know how to communicate with the traveler about transportation issues. I can’t get any help from TBL. My inquiries go ignored. If this is the kind of predicament the guides find themselves, heaven help the travelers.

Lately, things are improving, and I still have a lot of faith in ToursByLocals. I genuinely believe they are the best platform in the market. But they should really clear up the mess created earlier in the shortest possible time.

*Updated 2/10/2025