Trust & fairness
How we keep guides accountable and travellers protected.
Most tour marketplaces work the same way, and it's rarely visible until you look for it: a commission of 20–50% gets folded into the price before you ever see it, guides raise prices to absorb it, and search results can be shaped by who pays the platform the most rather than who runs the best tour. None of that is illegal, but taking that much just to connect two people is hard to call anything other than a rip-off. We think that cut should be far lower, and visible, not hidden, so you can decide for yourself whether it's fair.
Verified bookings only
Reviews can only be left after a completed, paid booking: no fake reviews, no review-for-discount schemes.
Fair ranking
Search ranking is driven by ratings, review volume and how responsive a guide is, never by subscription tier or ad spend.
Secure payments
Payments run through Stripe Connect; card details never touch our servers, and refunds follow the cancellation policy shown before you book.
Guides you can verify
Every guide profile shows real, booking-verified reviews before you commit, not a marketing blurb.
Why a 8% platform cost?
Most tour marketplaces charge a commission of 20% to 50%, folded into the price before you ever see it. We charge one flat platform cost per booking, never added on top of what you pay. It comes out of the guide's share, it's shown in the price breakdown before you book, and it doesn't change based on how much a guide spends with us or how long they've been on the platform. Here's exactly what it covers:
That's the whole cost. No listing fees, no premium placement, no charge for messaging a guide before you book.
Not a smaller cut. A different model.
Most tour and activity marketplaces run on commission, typically 20% to 50% of every booking, priced to maximize what the platform earns and folded into the total before you ever see it. GuidesUnited runs on something else: a platform cost, priced to cover what it actually takes to run the platform, shown to you in full above.
| Most marketplaces | GuidesUnited | |
|---|---|---|
| How the price is set | A commission, priced to maximize platform revenue | A platform cost, priced to cover what running the platform costs |
| What you see | Not itemized | Every booking, broken down, before you pay |
| Search ranking | Can favor whoever pays more | Reviews, reliability, responsiveness only |
What we don't do
- We don't rank tours by who pays us more.
- We don't take a bigger cut as a guide grows.
- We don't add fees that aren't in the breakdown above.
- We don't lock guides into the platform. Leave anytime, keep your reviews and your relationships with travellers.
Keeping bookings and communication on GuidesUnited is what lets us run on a small, fixed cost instead of a commission. It's the same reason the fee breakdown above stays this simple. If a guide asks you to move a booking off-platform, that's worth a second thought.
Our commitment
This is the part of GuidesUnited we're not planning to change.
1. Transparency
Every cost on this platform is visible before you pay: never a hidden cut, never a number that doesn't add up.
2. No commissions
What we charge is priced to cover what it costs to run the platform (infrastructure, payments, security, development), not to maximize what we earn as you succeed. It's never a lever we pull for growth, and never a factor in ranking.
3. Ranking by quality, never by payment
Reviews, reliability and responsiveness decide what travellers see first. Paying us more has never moved anyone up a search result, and it never will.
4. Guides stay independent
No exclusivity, no penalty for guiding elsewhere, no lock-in.
5. Guides will get a say
As the platform grows, active guides will be able to propose and vote on changes to how GuidesUnited works. Not day-to-day decisions, but the principles above. That system doesn't exist yet; when it does, it'll be built to protect these commitments, not soften them.
These aren't a growth tactic. They're the reason this platform exists in the first place.
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