A call for partners
We're looking for a small number of organisations to build a fairer tourism economy with. Here is what we're asking for, and what we can honestly give back.
GuidesUnited was built by a working tour guide who had sold through most of the large platforms and did not want to work that way any more. One platform cost, published and itemized on every booking, and a search ranking nobody can buy their way up.
That is a position rather than a product feature, and a position is easier to hold with other people standing in it. So this is an open call. We are looking for organisations who think tourism should pay the people who actually do the work, and who are willing to say so in public, next to us.
Two things to be plain about before you read any further. A partnership costs nothing and cannot be bought: there is no fee to become one, and we are not paying you to be one. And we are small and new, so what is on offer is a share in something being built rather than a share of an audience we already have.
What a partner gets
Your name here, permanently
Your logo, a line about what you do, and a link search engines follow, in all six languages the site is published in. It stays up. A partner who backed us in our first year is still one in our fifth, whatever happens in between.
The figures for your region, once a year
What guides in your canton or your country earned through us, what travellers paid, and what we kept. The same numbers we work from rather than a marketing summary of them. Useful if you have members to answer to.
A named person, not an inbox
Somebody here who answers, by name, and who tells you before something changes rather than after. We are not going to promise you a support desk, because at our size that would be a thing we said and not a thing we did.
Who we're calling for
Guide associations and federations
The bodies that already represent working guides and set the standards for them. You know which of your members are handing over a third of a booking. We would far rather be introduced by you than turn up in their inbox on our own.
Tourism offices and destination organisations
A destination that wants its visitors' money to stay in the town. We can tell you where it currently goes, booking by booking, which is not a number most platforms will put in front of a tourism office.
Guide companies and tour operators
Companies running their own guides who want a booking channel that is not priced against their own margin. You keep your prices, your guides and your customers, and you pay the same published cost as everybody else.
Hotels, hosts and transport operators
Anybody whose guests ask what they should do tomorrow. Answering that with a local guide who is properly paid is a better answer than a rack of leaflets, and it costs you nothing to give.
Schools, researchers and sustainability groups
People who study or argue about how tourism's money moves. Ours is unusually easy to look at, because we publish the split on every booking instead of reconstructing it afterwards.
What we ask in return
Nothing that costs money. What a partnership actually needs from you is one of these, and you tell us which one:
- Say it in public. A line and a logo on your own site, so the relationship is visible from your side as well as ours.
- Tell the people you represent, once. In your own words, at whatever moment suits you. Not a campaign, and not a mailing list we get to use.
- Or build something with us. A pilot in one town, an application for funding, a piece of shared work neither of us would take on alone.
And one thing that is not optional: tell us when we get it wrong. A partner who only says the flattering half is not much use to a platform whose whole argument is that it publishes the unflattering numbers too.
If you want to do more
Separate from all of the above, and deliberately after it: if you think this project is worth something, you can put money towards running it. Nobody is asked to, a partner least of all, and being one has nothing to do with whether you do.
Whatever amount seems right to you, and it buys nothing at all. No listing, no mention anywhere, no lower platform cost, no place in search results, no faster answer to your email. We keep no list of who has given and there is no page with names on it, because the moment a contribution earns something it stops being a contribution and becomes a purchase, and we would rather keep the first thing. Stripe will ask for an email to send you a receipt, which is between you and Stripe and goes on no list of ours.
We are a company rather than a charity, so it is not a charitable donation and there is no receipt to set against tax. What you get back is our thanks, and a platform that carries on working the way this page describes.
Become a partner
Tell us who you are and what you would actually want out of it. We read these ourselves and answer within a week, including the ones we say no to.
We answer in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Turkish, and we answer the ones we say no to as well.