ToursByLocals puts a person between you and the map

In 2006, on the Great Wall of China, Paul Melhus and Dave Vincent met two women who could explain what they were looking at. The women were selling souvenirs. Their knowledge, however, was the thing the visitors valued. After an illuminating impromptu tour, the travelers faced an awkward question: how should they pay? Buying a souvenir seemed an inadequate way to compensate expertise.

That small mismatch became the premise of ToursByLocals. The encounter worked beautifully. The arrangement around it needed work. What if finding a knowledgeable person required less luck? What if the fee could be settled before anyone started walking?

The person is part of the itinerary

Launched in 2008, ToursByLocals occupies a particular corner of the travel market. Travelers browse guides and experiences, read reviews, exchange messages and book. Its emphasis is private touring: your companions and your guide, without another party being added. City walks, food tours, art, history, outdoor adventures, safaris and cruise excursions sit inside that proposition.

There are plenty of ways to buy something to do on holiday. Viator and GetYourGuide offer broad activity catalogs; Withlocals also connects visitors with local hosts and guides. An independent guide can take bookings directly. ToursByLocals gives the traveler a more specific starting point: a private experience with room to shape the day. The website is an introduction to the person whose judgment you will be borrowing.

For a couple, that might mean spending longer with a painting. For a family, it might mean asking about walking distances before committing. A cruise passenger has a different constraint: the ship leaves. The company offers private shore excursions with a Return to Ship Guarantee, subject to its conditions. Each customer is buying a different answer to the same question: can this day fit us?

A quarter of the trips changed shape

In its review of 2024, ToursByLocals reported that 27.3% of tours were customized. That makes flexibility more than an attractive adjective. A substantial share of travelers used it. The company also reported approximately 350,000 travelers that year and 7,811 new published itineraries, excluding custom ones. The supply of possible days keeps expanding because guides keep inventing them.

A revealing example arrived with the 2026 Golden Guide Awards. Montreal guide Françoise Baby won the Debut Experience award for a literary journey inspired by Louise Penny’s novels, developed with the author’s support. This is an appealingly specific piece of inventory. A city becomes something different when the person showing it to you has a particular interest worth sharing.

The operating challenge is finding those people. The company’s September 2026 account of recruitment describes an application, questionnaire and hour-long video interview, followed by roughly three to four weeks of onboarding. Historically, it says, around one in five applicants has been accepted. Support continues through a new guide’s first five-star review, with feedback thereafter. Selection and coaching take real work behind the cheerful profile photograph.

The price of someone’s attention

The economics are straightforward enough to explain without inventing a universal price. Guides set their tour prices. ToursByLocals retains a percentage commission, while travelers may also pay a service fee and other applicable charges. The final checkout total matters, as do the listing’s inclusions: transport, tickets and meals deserve a careful read.

The distinction between a marketplace and the guide matters too. Under its public terms, the traveler’s tour contract is with the independent guide. ToursByLocals provides the platform and transaction infrastructure. For guides, the attraction is access to travelers they might never reach alone, while retaining control over their schedule and pricing. Their calculation is whether that distribution and support justify the commission.

Growth capital arrived in a US$33 million investment from Tritium Partners, announced in January 2020. The stated priorities included technology, user experience, marketing and hiring. The pandemic interrupted the travel business soon afterward. By July 2024, ToursByLocals was announcing a rebuilt website, refreshed identity and further Series B backing from Tritium.

The machinery has to disappear

A personal service still depends on impersonal systems. In public responses to 2024 complaints, ToursByLocals acknowledged that its website launch overwhelmed support capacity and that payment-processor glitches delayed refunds. Some responses recorded refunds and goodwill credits. For a business selling confidence in a stranger abroad, a stalled refund is a particularly expensive kind of friction.

Messaging presented another problem. A September 2026 TalkJS case study describes a legacy chat system with scaling limits and awkward document sharing. ToursByLocals replaced it in December 2025, using parallel systems during migration. The vendor reports roughly 15% higher enquiry-to-booking conversion afterward and lower net costs when infrastructure and developer time are included. It is a vendor’s account, not proof that chat alone caused the improvement.

“We are here to keep travel human.”Lisa Chen, CEO and president, January 2025

For travelers, the useful move is to send a specific brief: what interests you, how far you want to walk, who is coming and what must be included. Then check the answer against the listing and total price. A private guide cannot conjure museum tickets when admission is sold out, remove local restrictions or make an ambitious route physically sensible.

There is also a limit to how much choosing people want to do. The Essentials Collection offers curated city experiences with a guide matched after booking. That is a telling concession to the holidaymaker who wants personal attention without comparing every possible itinerary. ToursByLocals began by trying to make a lucky encounter repeatable. Its continuing task is to make the arrangements easy enough that the encounter gets to be the memorable part.