Tour aggregators may help local storytellers with visibility, but Thiam Wei Toh, founder of Indie Singapore Tours, warns that guides run the risk of earnings shock, erasure of brand identity, and loss of customer data
I have a deep and unapologetic love for the concept of the free walking tour. When it is done right, it is the purest transaction in the tourism industry.
A passionate storyteller stands at a pre-designated meeting point, invites a group of strangers to walk with them as they share their love letter to their home. At the end, the guest pays what they feel the story was worth.
When Indie Singapore started, this was our entire business model. Today, even as an established agency running premium culinary and corporate experiences, we still conduct free walking tours at a loss to the company. Our guides get to keep 100 per cent of their tip, while we pay for the administration and marketing.
We keep doing it because we believe in the philosophy. It is, truly, the most romantic and idealistic part of the company.
To this end, we need to talk about tour aggregators – the business model popularised by tech disruptors – and why they represent a crisis for independent guides and the industry at large.
The illusion of disruption
Operators have argued that free walking tours disrupted traditional paid tour agencies a decade ago, and now tech platforms are disrupting the walking tours.
These critics see this as a natural evolution of business. They point to companies like Sandemans New Europe, which popularised the tip-based model in the 2000s by charging independent guides a per-head marketing fee to join its network.
However, this is not a fair comparison. Sandemans New Europe built a brand, it trained guides, and created standard operating procedures. In many cities, Sandemans New Europe led the day-to-day operations of tours itself.
Tour aggregators today do none of that. They take zero risk. They do not train the guides. They do not create the narratives.
Instead, they use the money they extract from guides to bid on Google Search terms, and in doing so, artificially place themselves between the traveller and the local operator.
To put it crudely, this is not disruption, but SEO blackmail because passionate storytellers have to pay to not be buried.
The casino economics of guiding
For a local storyteller who wanted to show off his city, tour aggregators seem like a great starting point. The platform provides the eyeballs, after all.
However, over time, the financial structure reveals that the house always wins.
In the tour aggregator model, the platform’s revenue is guaranteed while the guides revenue is entirely variable. Tour aggregators charge the guide a fixed fee for every guest who books.
Should 20 people show up for the walking tour, the guide would owe the platform a fixed commission for every head.
Should it rain, or should guests choose to leave only a token two-dollar tip at the end of the tour, the guide would have to pay out of pocket for the privilege of working.
Defenders of these platforms are quick to point out that guides can dispute “no-shows” to claw back those fees. But this argument misses the point – this is an asymmetrical risk in which the platform receives its fixed cut while the guide absorbs 100 per cent of the shock.
What about accountability?
To placate operators, tour aggregators recently introduced guest ratings, allowing guides to flag serial no-shows or chronic bad actors. But guides will tell you that this process is largely performative. We routinely see guests with documented histories of ghosting tours allowed to remain on the platform free to book again.
Every user represents another guaranteed booking fee. The aggregator has no incentive to ban a bad guest.
The erasure of identity and intellectual property
Perhaps the most damaging long-term effect is the systematic erasure of the personal brand, and what makes each of the storyteller unique.
Today, if you were to go to a busy meeting point in any major city, you will see a chaotic scene of multiple guides holding similar umbrellas. When guests approach, guides rarely ask: “Are you from Indie Singapore?”
Instead, they ask: “Are you from Guruwalk?”
The guide is no longer a storyteller with a brand. He is now white-labelled, just a commodity on a digital shelf.
This tightening grip is alarming. We are seeing platforms restrict “hobby” accounts – slashing the number of tours an independent guide can list from three down to one, and then monthly sign-ups are capped.
The worst development in my point of view is that platforms are now demanding guides to upload their proprietary, step-by-step itineraries just to remain listed. By doing so, platforms are absorbing the intellectual property of local passionate storytellers, who could have spent months perfecting a route. This information could then be used to train the platform’s own ecosystem.
How to build without the tollbooth
If you are a local who wants to start a walking tour company today, how do you survive without handing your margins and identity to an aggregator?
You need to own your digital real estate. Build a website – it does not have to be expensive. Start capturing the email addresses of every guest who walks with you.
Partner locally, not globally, and cross-pollinate with human beings in your neighbourhood. Do this by walking into the coffee shops, boutique hotels, and local bakeries on your route. Tell them you will bring them foot traffic if they let you leave a flyer at their counter.
Command your reviews. At the end of every tour, ask your guests to review you on Google or TripAdvisor under your company name, not on the tour aggregator platform. Those reviews are your armour against SEO hijacking.
The free walking tour is too beautiful a concept to be reduced to a labelled algorithm.
Tell your stories; own your own brand.
