Our commitments?
1. Only the best guides
This is our founding principle: guides don't register themselves — we select them and list them after a rigorous verification process. Experience, recommendations, qualifications, responsiveness, reliability and safety — every point is carefully studied. Each listed guide must have at least 3 years of experience and 5 positive recommendations from different sources (forums, review sites, blogs, guestbooks…) and no negative feedback.
"Only guides who perfectly meet all the criteria are certified and listed on the platform. At the slightest verified and justified negative review, the guide is removed."
2. Truly more affordable trips
Organizing your trip directly with a local guide will cost you 3 to 4 times less than going through a travel agency! SoGuide eliminates all the classic travel intermediaries and thus enables direct pricing — fair prices.
"How can a group of 10 people pay a total of €20,000 for a ten-day trek in Nepal, when the local guide only receives 1% of that, meaning €200?"
3. Better paid guides
Our model allows tourism revenue to be redistributed more equitably to local players. We give guides the technological tools to manage their business independently without being at the mercy of travel agencies. Guides earn much more when travelers book directly. Everyone wins.
"SoGuide helps me find many new clients, which allows me to grow my guide and travel organizer business while being much more autonomous."
4. Tailor-made and truly authentic experiences
Local guides have total freedom to propose options with no constraints other than those of the travelers. This guarantees tailor-made services, far from mass tourism circuits and closer to local communities. Travelers come to SoGuide for off-the-beaten-track experiences, treks, expeditions or cultural guided visits lasting from a few days to several weeks, which require the skills of an experienced guide.
"We just returned from a trip to Tanzania with Meleji [...] We met the people of his village — we would never have had this type of experience with an agency…"