Local, authentic experiences are vital for getting to know a
city, but it can be hard to know where to turn to for genuine activities that are
more revealing than the pages of a guidebook.
So, for this comparison I went to Airbnb and Get Your Guide
for two experiences in Crete within the same week.
The Experiences
A walking tour around the city of Rethymno, explaining the
history and including a bite to eat. I
wanted to find good places to eat and see parts of the city that I wouldn’t
find without a local guide.
Price: £54 per person for a 4-hour experience including
lunch
A guide around the archaeological site of the Palace of
Knossos. I wanted to learn as much about
the history of the palace and of Crete in general, and how it fitted in with
the Greek myths (see also Beyond the Myth blog post).
I genuinely can’t learn anything from boards in a museum so
having someone talk to me in person and point relevant things out was much more
valuable (and interesting!).
Price: £126 for two people for a 1.5-hour experience
including entry to the site
Booking
Whenever I book anything, I always have a panic that I’ve
done it wrong; that I’ve booked my flights for the wrong day or my hotel in the
wrong city.
So, I found it really reassuring that both platforms sent
both an automatic email confirmation and a more personal one confirming who my
husband and I would meet and where.
The email from Airbnb gave me a little bit more information
about the guide and her experience and felt a bit more inviting.
Quality of Guides
In Greece, guides have to be licensed and have a certain
level of qualification to be able to give tours around archaeological sites.
This means that you should always get someone knowledgeable for a place like
the Palace of Knossos.
The Palace is a huge site, spanning 22,000m2,
and would have contained over 1000 rooms. Without our guide, Vangelis, it would have been difficult to navigate, but he taught us SO much and answered all the questions we
had.
He had a book to show us pictures
of parts of the palace which are no longer open to visitors and artefacts which
are in the museum, and it was so well-thumbed that it really fit the part as
well.
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| Kalitsounia: sweet cheese in pastry, which I need at least 6 of a day now. |
Kiki, from the Airbnb tour, has a master’s degree in History
and Archaeology. She has studied for
four years but still needs another two to be able to give tours around
archaeological sites(!).
She was also super personable and engaging, exactly what I
wanted for a trip around a city like this.
She knew loads of people as she was walking around which meant that we
could go into buildings to see what the architecture was like inside, and she
knew the family who ran the café where we had lunch.
Plus, I wouldn't have found out how delicious kalitsounias are without her.
What did the tour guides think?
Vangelis’ company only use Get Your Guide for this tour, but
they have much more on their own website, which they get most of their business
from. They only get around 1-2 tours per
week from Get Your Guide, but they use it to advertise to multiple language
speakers (Vangelis conducts tours in 4 languages!).
Kiki thought their team got around 7 out of 10 of their
tours from Airbnb, with rest coming from other sites such as Intrepid Urban
Adventures.
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| The Palace of Knossos |
Types of experiences available
Airbnb has a huge range of different experiences hosted by
locals. It feels like you can have a
cookery class, walking tour or wine tasting in any city in the world.
Get Your Guide is focussed on specialist historical guides
with a mix of traditional excursions in there like day trips by boat and entry
to museums. Some European cities have
more varied activities available, but not as much as Airbnb.
For my next trip…
When I next need a guide for an archaeological or special
site, I’m definitely going to go to Get Your Guide because they seem geared up
for those activities and all the guides appear to be experts.
But for me, the value and range of experiences available on
Airbnb mean that I’m much more likely to look to them first the next time I
want to explore.
