A new tour guide cooperative called Tour Guys has emerged in Toronto and Vancouver, and are offering free walking tours as an inexpensive way for visitors and locals to discover the cities.
Free walking tours are popular in many European cities, and many seasonal tour guides that lead them make a decent amount of money based solely on the tips they receive. Canadian cities did not have such tours until now, with the creation of Tour Guys, a tour guide cooperative founded by Jason Kucherawy and Steve Woodall. Jason and Steve conceived of the idea as a way to do walking tours of their respective cities (Toronto and Vancouver) as a break from their regular jobs as travel consultants. With more than 20 years of combined tour guiding experience in cities across Canada and the USA, and knowing how successful the European free tour model has been, they decided to try it for themselves.
Tour Guys is a cooperative in the sense that is comprised of independent tour guides (Like Jason and Steve) who offer their own tour (for a per person cost of $10-$30) and contribute some of their tour earnings to the cooperative in order to pay for marketing and promotion of all tours. Beginning this past May with just the free tours to generate buzz and a reputation as Tour Guys, Jason and Steve are opening up the cooperative to other guides in Toronto and Vancouver who wish to contribute their own custom tour to the mix and pay their share of the marketing costs to Jason and Steve. Guides will be accepted into the cooperative if they are fun and dynamic. Tour Guys tours are aimed squarely at the Gen X and Gen Y demographic, with an emphasis on what’s cool, strange, or intriguing about the cities. Tours are selected based on quality, marketability, and fun factor. A “Toronto Ghost Tour” is the first of such tours to be added.
“Many people ask if there is a catch, or if our free tours are sponsored somehow”, says Jason Kucherawy, “I think they have a hard time believing that we are really doing this just for tips. When I tell them we also want to be famous, they understand. We’re not just running walking tours, we’re building a brand and the start of a following through social media like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.” Tour Guys has recently posed a challenge to people to send them questions about Toronto and Vancouver that they will answer with a YouTube video. “The crazier the better. We’re looking for questions that will give us an opportunity to answer in a way that’s fun and would make a good one minute YouTube video”, says Kucherawy, “Tour Guys is about performing and making friends around the world. I think the new media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube will help us grow and sustain a fan base.”
About Tour Guys:
Started by Jason Kucherawy and Steve Woodall, two friends who met while working in the Toronto student and educational travel industry, Tour Guys is a cooperative of independent tour guides that contribute part of their earnings to the group to pay for marketing and advertising all of their tours. Using new online media, they aim to become well-known to travelers to Canada.
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