{"id":190,"date":"2010-06-19T18:30:24","date_gmt":"2010-06-19T18:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tour-beijing.com\/blog\/?p=190"},"modified":"2010-09-11T04:50:51","modified_gmt":"2010-09-11T04:50:51","slug":"looking-for-a-private-tour-guide-in-beijing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tour-beijing.com\/blog\/beijing-travel\/looking-for-a-private-tour-guide-in-beijing","title":{"rendered":"Independent tour guides or tour guides designated by a tour company?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n
Polite and knowledgeable tour guides\u00a0are much\u00a0sought after\u00a0by\u00a0foreign tourists who want to hire private tour guides to make most of\u00a0their trips to Beijing China. So, how to find these helpful and resourceful tour guides?\u00a0 Usually foreign tourists\u00a0rely on\u00a0the following channels to\u00a0locate private tour guides:<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
1) Travel Forum and Travel Review Websites: like Tripadvisors.com, Virtualtourist.com \u2026<\/span><\/div>\n
2) Tour guide\u00a0matching websites: like synotrip.com\/tour-guides, freeiva.com\u2026<\/span><\/div>\n
3)\u00a0Contact tour guides directly at some scenic areas<\/span><\/div>\n
4) Through word of mouth<\/span><\/div>\n
5) Local travel agency <\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
Maybe a travel agency is the last thing you will think of. But the fact is that paying a tour guide through a travel agency is the only legal activity in terms of offering tour guide service.\u00a0A private\u00a0tour guide trading with tourists directly is illegal in China. In China, a licensed tour guide must be\u00a0designated by a tour company.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
A\u00a0money-oriented tour guide directly trading with the tourists is a kind of illegal travel business. Because a tour guide is not a legal entity, unable to hold responsibility for the tourists. After all, travel business is fairly a risky business involved with the life of the tourists.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
The existence of a self-employed tour guide doesn\u2019t prove it is legal in China.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
Many foreign tourists have a simple thought of\u00a0paying a tour guide to show me around and nobody going to get in trouble. \u201cGetting into trouble or not\u201d will not deny the fact that\u00a0private tour guides trading with tourists directly is illegal in China.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
It is\u00a0advisable\u00a0to\u00a0avoid using self-employed tour guides, keep from illegal \u201cblack\u201d tour guides though sometimes they may offer much cheaper and \u201cgood\u201d tour guide service directly. Pay a little more for safety by locating a legitimate tour operator for licensed and legal tour guides.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
\n
Well, you may doubt that I\u2019m trying to drum up a bit of business for tour companies in Beijing by speaking out the fact above.\u00a0Some foreign tourists think the last thing\u00a0they would do is hire a tour company that has no idea what is going on in Beijing, and trying to scare tourists with this kind of nonsense. There are hundreds of tour guides delivering an independent and good service. In lots of cases better than the\u00a0tour guides designated by\u00a0tour companies.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
So, independent tour guides or tour guides designated by a tour company? <\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
It is a never ending story. <\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
But one thing is sure that everybody will be responsible for their own choice.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Ms Lee, one of the best tour guide at Tour-Beijing.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0 Polite and knowledgeable tour guides\u00a0are much\u00a0sought after\u00a0by\u00a0foreign tourists who want to hire private tour guides to make most of\u00a0their trips to Beijing China. So, how to find these helpful and resourceful tour guides?\u00a0 Usually foreign tourists\u00a0rely on\u00a0the following channels to\u00a0locate private tour guides:\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 1) Travel Forum and Travel Review Websites: like Tripadvisors.com, Virtualtourist.com…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,19,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beijing-tour-reviews","category-beijing-travel","category-china-tour-guides"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tour-beijing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tour-beijing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tour-beijing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tour-beijing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tour-beijing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/www.tour-beijing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":194,"href":"https:\/\/www.tour-beijing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions\/194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tour-beijing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tour-beijing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tour-beijing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}