Paris greeters
Written by Jacinta Lodge
What better way to get to know a city than to be shown around by someone who genuinely loves living there? That’s the idea behind the Paris Greeters.
- Paris – Quai de Seine by Panoramas
Paris greeters are volunteers who adore their city and love showing it off to visitors. They’ll offer you walking tours of their favourite sights or areas, showing off the architecture or the history. Greeters will take groups of up to six people (including children) on a relaxed, friendly and above all personal journey through the streets of Paris. This is a new face for the city renowned for it’s distaste for foreign tourists.
Booking a greeter is easy through their webpage. Simply fill out a form at least two weeks before you are due to arrive and the organisers will attempt to match you with a guide. While on the tour you will be responsible for paying your greeters and your own public transport costs.
The greeters themselves do not accept payment or tips, however the organisation behind it does and will happily take donations to keep the concept running. It is a wonderful chance to see the French capital through the eyes of a local while not forking out for a tour with a large group doing the usual tourist traps with a blasé guide.
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Jacinta,
You’re also responsible for your greeter’s transportation costs – ours wanted cash in lieu of money because she already had a monthly pass of some sort. She also wanted to be treated to lunch and told us that even though greeters are not supposed to accept tips, they all do anyway. When we told her we weren’t planning to have lunch right just then and wanted to explore some more, she suddenly became very rushed and had somewhere else to go. I suspect that some greeters have an agreement with cafe/bistro owners to bring them business.
I was a greeter myself, but not in Paris and can tell you plenty of behind-the-scenes stories of taking the poor tourists for a ride ;)
Anna,
Well that’s certainly an unpleasant surprise. With the effort they put into reinforcing the point that the greeters don’t accept tips I wouldn’t have expected it – compared to the “free” Sandemann/New city walking tours where tipping is expected and the guides are specifically not volunteers.
Hmm… Now that I look more closely at their instructions, I realise they do specifically say that the cost of transportation is “at your expense (for you and the greeter)”, which is something I initially misread to mean the greeter pays for themselves as well.
As to the deals with local businesses/affiliate programs… I have yet to meet a tour guide -actually I would change that into any kind of travel related job – who hasn’t had them.
Jacinta,
Yes, you are right that about “kickback” programs, but as you said, this outfit was supposed to be different ;)
Anna & Jacintha,
I’ve read your posts which globally seems to be positive. On behalf of the association “Parisien d’un jour” thank you for your feedback.
If I could correct your perception, having a stroll with a greeter is free (no 10€ fee), this is part of the Greeter chart. But it’s true that we ask for donation. Half of our visitors do make a donation, the rest dont.
Donations are collected at registration time, right after the stroll directly to your greeter that then forward your money to the association or after the stroll through our “thank you” mail.
True for paiement of greeter local transportation when needed which hardly never happen! Anyhow a metro ticket is 1,15€!
Nearly all visitors are more than happy to invite their greeter for a drink at the end of a stroll. Some times it may happen that some visitors invite their greeter to have lunch or dinner.. But this is absolutely not what is ‘expected” to happen in our greeter’s mind.
If you like to be more precise, I’ll be really wishing to get rid of this kind of reaction from our side if it exists…
Very best regards,
Christian – Thank you for your comment, I have made some changes to the original post in the light of this, deleting the part about the 10 Euro fee and just leaving that donations are welcome and adding that the guest is responsible for the greeter’s transport costs. Neither Anna nor Jacinta write write for the Europe a la Carte Blog.