There are two kinds of travel: you arrive in a city after a 15-hour flight, neither understand the language nor the signs, are overtired, foreign, alone and only after one thing: sleep; the second possibility is that you travel as part of a group, are shepherded onto an air-conditioned bus on arrival, swamped with information, dropped off at the hotel and left to your own devices. Neither of the two sounds particularly appealing, which is why there is now a third option: a friendly local meets you at the airport, drives you to a comfortable hotel, takes you to a decent restaurant in the evening and, the next day, gives you a tour of the city off the beaten track.

Impossible to organize? Not in the slightest. Thanks to six graduates and students from ETH Zurich, your local tour guide with a difference is only a few mouse-clicks away. Pascal Mathis, Jochen Mattes, Johannes Reck, Tobias Rein, Martin Sieber and Tao Tao have founded the company GetYourGuide GmbH. The corporate concept is conceivably simple: tour guides from all over the world upload their profile with a photograph and outline of the tours they offer onto the Internet platform www.getyourguide.com. Travellers can then browse through them at will and book directly on line. “We bring guides and travellers together, and in a direct and personal way at that”, explains Pascal Mathis. The business model works on a commission basis. “The tour guides pay us a certain amount for every tour that is booked, not unlike the fee system on Ebay”, explains Jochen Mattes. The result is a win-win-win situation: “The traveller can book a local guide and thus explore his or her destination as authentically as possible, the tour guide attracts new customers with the minimum amount of effort and using a modern medium, and of course we don’t leave empty-handed either.” The bigger the community gets, the better it will be for everyone, as the motto goes. Advertising has not been incorporated in the concept. “If need be, it would conceivable that we create links to business associates from the travel industry”, states Pascal Mathis.

Anyone can be a tour guide

GetYourGuide primarily lives from its openness towards a wide variety of proposals. In principle, anyone who knows a bit about where they live or has an original idea for a special tour can become a tour guide. The platform developed by the six young entrepreneurs from ETH Zurich is cornering two niches in one fell swoop with this concept: on the one hand, GetYourGuide is a social network; very much in the vein of Web 2.0, new relationships can be made easily and experiences exchanged. On the other hand, enthusiastic tourists can find a range of services here which a travel agency or tour operator would not normally provide. An appraisal system guarantees quality. Anyone who books a guide and completes the tour is then asked to give feedback and award points. Once a tour guide has accumulated enough points, he or she is promoted from the status of hobby guide to semi-pro. This will have certain advantages: “We would like to offer the semi-pros a flat-rate, i.e. a monthly payment instead of the fee for every tour booked”, explains Pascal Mathis. A pro category is also planned for the future, but this will be exclusively for agencies managing several guides under one profile.

Technically speaking, the young entrepreneurs are focussing on the Internet for now, although bookings might be possible from cell phones in the future. “The corresponding applications still have to be developed before this can become feasible, though”, says Jochen Mattes. As far as the web is concerned, however, various search features are available to the travellers. Tour guides can be located by clicking on electronic maps and selecting the services offered in the appropriate countries, regions or towns. And if you are in a rush, you can utilize the “GuideNow” feature. The search then proceeds by entering the date and location, price range and kind of tour you are looking for. The selection automatically sends out a request via email to all the guides at the location in question and, if they are able to offer a tour on the desired date, they then have 20 minutes to reply.

Euro 08 designated kick-off event

The project is in its infancy and the six young entrepreneurs are still on the lookout for tour guides who want to take advantage of their platform. They are concentrating on Zurich for the time being. The European Football Championship, which kicks off in June, will be the perfect opportunity to test the business model and the website should be fully functional by the time the tournament gets underway. If it all works out, the team has set its sights on the Olympic Games in Beijing this summer. After all, they have a native of China in their midst in the form of Tao Tao and the business idea itself was actually born in Beijing. Johannes Reck and Tao Tao flew there last spring to attend a conference. They travelled separately and Reck had to fend for himself in the Chinese capital for the first day. “He had quite a number of difficulties, didn’t know his way around and couldn’t communicate”, explains Pascal Mathis. This changed dramatically once he was joined by Tao Tao, however: “Even though Tao Tao has a German passport and can’t speak Chinese perfectly, all of a sudden all doors were open to them.” And that is how the idea for GetYourGuide was born. As the slogan on the website reads, “Be a local. Everywhere you go”.

Links and references:

• GetYourGuide