Free tours, the trap of colored umbrellas in the city
Living near the Sagrada Familia means (or meant before the coronavirus) being aware that a human snake smelling of sunscreen and fried will gobble you up sooner or later. Although carrying an open umbrella in one hand, a loudspeaker in the other and give more orders than a ship's captain, tour guides have been the last heroes of an impossible mission: to bring order to disorder . Barcelona City Council has had to take action on the matter, implementing the ethical code of good practices ; audio guides, group limitation and itineraries to minimize inconvenience to the daily life of the locals. Measures that remain on paper without the good work of these guides " as subscribers and disseminators of the quality of Barcelona ”. But what happens if said tour guide acts outside the law?
In florence They have a very clear answer and they are determined to pursue with economic sanctions the so-called "free tours" . A decision that can set precedents and involve other major tourist destinations, such as Spain. The Association of tourist guides enabled by the Government of Catalonia (AGUICAT) , has been chasing umbrellas of all colors for 4 years. First they were red, but later came white, yellow, green, blue and purple. Hundreds of tours of all kinds supposedly free and that harm the sector at all levels.
“We want public administrations to put a stop to this unfair competition exercised in the streets of our most touristic cities. The answer given by the City Council is that the issue is the responsibility of the Generalitat and the Generalitat tells us that they cannot do anything by virtue of the Bolkestein Directive that favors the freedom of establishment and the free circulation of services between the member states”, says Txell Carrerres, president of the association . “This ping pong game between the two administrations It leaves us alone in the street fighting in unequal conditions against the large Free Tour companies. ”. Faced with such an adverse scenario, a hope or a model to follow: "We know that there are Spanish cities that have taken free tours out of the street, such as Granada, that is, how difficult it cannot be."
Difficult or not, it's something with which Nestor Centelles from Okai Barcelona lives daily . “It is easy to spot free tour groups in open spaces in the city. Moreover, I would tell you that it is full. They are so present in your day to day who has studied their modus operandi . “A quick way to spot them is to look whether or not the guide wears the official accreditation in sight . They do not wear badges that identify them. They also have a very specific way of acting. You will never see them in hot spots, such as inside museums or in Park Güell, because they know they will be persecuted and denounced by the official guides. They are placed in strategic places, such as Plaza Catalunya or in front of the cathedral , to give the sensation of an informal chat between a group of friends. From there they move through all the narrow streets of the Gothic quarter without much trouble”.
A tour with an official guide is supposed to offer proven professionalism . A requirement that cannot be asked of a free tour, but that curiously many do not require as a determining factor . “They are usually very young guides, usually university students who spend a few years in Barcelona. The most curious thing is that they explain a city that is not theirs , which is not the one they have lived since childhood. So the experience will depend a lot on the luck factor and the type of guide you find. I know several Germans and Italians who are currently doing it in Barcelona. They tell me that many tourists tell them that they prefer their service because offer a fresher point of view outside of the official version . They prefer to miss points of tourist interest if the alternative is a much more enjoyable, fun and, of course, cheaper tour”.
Price is a key factor here. Many of the free tours are offered online at 0 cost . Nothing is further from reality. Reading the fine print it is clear that the economic consideration had to appear sooner or later. freetour.com , one of the most requested websites, offers two options:
“Set your tour as free and each person in your group will be free to decide how much to tip (no obligation), depending on their rating of the tour. The average tip per visitor is usually between 5 and 8 euros ”. The other option is even more specific and hints at the profits for the bridging company. “ Set your tour with a fixed price , or add a price scale, and clients will pay a 20% deposit on our platform at the time of booking, while the remaining balance (your earnings) will be paid by the client upon arrival, before from the start of the tour. Both options offer a promising horizon for guides because, according to their point of view, “the free tour model is fast becoming the preferred way for tourists to discover cities around the world”.
From Okai Barcelona they add another great advantage against which it is difficult to fight without losing out. “ They are companies that do not pay taxes . This makes it very easy to be competitive”, says Nestor Centelles. “I admit that in the past his presence did not bother me so much. Perhaps because Barcelona has always been a successful tourist destination with work for everyone. Think that a tourist on a Mediterranean cruise, who has half a day to take 4 photos around the city, is not looking for the same thing as a couple who have planned their trip to Barcelona well in advance. Not everyone is willing to pay a minimum of 150 euros to follow an official guide for 4 hours . That does not mean that I do not see the problem and I stand in solidarity with the sector in cities where work is scarcer. With the pandemic the presence of tourism has dropped so much that it is normal to be much more attentive . It cannot be that any untrained person thinks that the tour guide job is the best option to earn easy money. A good tour guide should be required to know notions of history and culture of the city , good oral diction, mastery of languages and something very important that is often forgotten, good customer service”.
Training and good manners that are learned by obtaining the official title as a tour guide. “The drawback is that 8 years ago no new calls appear . Many young people cannot wait that long and fall into the easy decision to start operating with free tours without so many impediments”, Centelles points out. A very particular situation that he lived in the first person María Gomez, when she decided to move to Berlin 11 years ago . Not speaking any German and with no previous work experience, she quickly realized that finding a job would be very tedious. “I remember that she went to a concert where another Spanish expatriate He told me about a company that was looking for guides and put me in contact with one of the Spanish-speaking guides who worked for Sandemans”.
This company founded by Chris Sandeman is considered the pioneer of free tours , since it began operating in 2003. This Yale student devised a system for tourists to decide the price of the tour, and not the other way around . Nowadays, Sandemans operates in 20 cities in Europe, the Middle East and the United States, and has more than 450 tour guides . "At that time they worked by word of mouth," recalls María Gomez. “I was given texts on the history of Berlin to pass a night test in front of the Brandenburg Gate. Basically I had to introduce myself and release the text so that they could analyze if it had the potential to be a guide.”
She was accepted and quickly explained the wonders of "the Sandemans philosophy" at headquarters. “Chris presented his company as a revolution, the system by which everyone could travel and enjoy a 'free' tour in any major European capital. The reality afterwards is that nothing is free, From minute one of the tour presentation speech, you already had to make it clear that this worked based on contributions , apart from having to promote the rest of the tour they offered with a fixed price. The purpose was obviously to get Free Tour customers to repeat. They called it 'Repeating', and if you didn't get a 'Repeating' of X percentage for two consecutive weeks they would kick you out without batting an eye”.
A tipped lure to turn young people into salespeople rather than a school for future good tour guides. “Apart from the damage it does to the sector, I guarantee you that there is no control over the content of the tours . So many times we could fall into inconsistencies or arguments that we could not develop due to sheer lack of preparation . The tour material passed from hand to hand, you took ideas from other guides or you prepared yourself in the best possible way”. Regarding the salary in black that was taken it was terribly irregular . “Everything depended on the type of public that you had: if they were backpackers you couldn't expect much, if you had families or older couples, you knew that that day you could leave with 100 euros clean in your pocket for just 3 hours and a half of work . The system worked in such a way that for each person added to the tour, 3 euros went to the company, and the rest you earned was yours. . Now the percentage that remains the company will have risen a lot. There were really bad days when if it coincided with you having had a 'bad group' of young backpackers for example, accustomed to traveling with the bare minimum, even the tour was due to the company, and you felt very miserable”.
A job insecurity which is very reminiscent of what home delivery people suffer from new Internet companies in 2020. Without contracts or insurance, pressure to comply with suffocating scales, 24/7 hours and an emotional burden that erodes day by day . “I had never seen it like this. It's true, unintentionally we were the pioneers of cultural precariousness ”, concludes María Gomez, who was fired for not complying with abusive percentages. Working conditions that, back in Spain, he has never accepted again.
Something that underlines Miguel Angel Cajigal , better known on social media under the alias of El Barroquista and member of ICOMOS, an international non-governmental organization dedicated to the conservation of the world's monuments . “It is enough to imagine ourselves, in any other profession or activity, that the clientele pay 'at will' and not a market price: let's imagine going to the market and paying for the tomatoes at the price we want, or doing the same at the hairdresser or with technical assistance. It is undignified to propose a model in which the people who work do not know how much they are going to get paid and link it, falsely, to what the public wants to contribute according to the attention received”.
And it is that behind the scenes of his argument lies a more general problem. “ In Spain there is no culture of paying for certain services . In the case of tourism, this mentality of 'if I can have it without paying, or paying whatever I want, why should I pay a fixed rate?' . It's something terrible, but at the same time quite perverse, because although there are people who apply it naturally to a 'free tour', I don't know anyone who would be able to defend doing the same thing in a bar. : pay what you want, regardless of what you consume. If we see that it is wrong in a bar, it is because it is wrong, regardless of which sector it is applied to”.
Some defend the thesis that the deep crisis in the sector, due to the global pandemic, can serve to open doors to the field. The Barroquist advocates more for common sense. “It is enough that companies are responsible. The 'free tours' are a symptom of the precariousness of a sector that, in theory, should fight to improve its quality and not to bury it . Quality is not improved by throwing away the prices and conditions of professionals. At the same time, I believe that with better real information on what is paid when contracting a service of these characteristics, as well as how affordable a quality service usually is, everyone would win. It must be stated clearly: hiring 'free tours' is letting yourself be deceived as a tourist”.