Here‘s a cheeky hybrid of actual and virtual tourism: the guide hasn’t been to all of the places advertised here at 100€ per person per day, and he hasn’t visited some for a decade, so instead of conducting costly research he learns them from Google Streetview. Which, for all I know, may work perfectly well for the company concerned. I imagine some tutors must have bluffed their way through the Grand Tour in this fashion, although I can’t imagine that they felt terribly comfortable.
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Sounds a perfectly reasonable way of cutting costs if your operation is about buildings and immovables instead of (as in your case) people and things that change. Although punters will eventually conclude that there is no point in paying a guide at all, or anything like as much, if he is adding so little value. Maybe he’s pretty.
My view of the future:
1) People are already using handhelds and electronic guides to do basic “hey, there’s a church” tours like these ones. Way cheaper and you don’t have to follow the umbrella. I can’t see much future for the kind of business linked to, but the masses are surprisingly slow and stupid.
2) It should be pretty easy to deploy (paid local) avatars into a post-StreetView product, getting the person-to-person element without going there and having your bag snatched. Again, no business for the walking companies.
3) followthebaldie.com will still take a small and discerning segment to meet roaming axe murderers and to steal cattle, and its guides will either be chopped up into little bits, gored to death, or die poor but honest and content.
Nah, there’ll always be work for traveling gigolos.