Best Overseas Private Tours: WithLocals

If you are looking for a personalized, affordable, and private overseas tour experience, definitely book a WithLocals tour.

When a friend told me about WithLocals, a guide service available in 40+ cities in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, that offers private tours with locals in your destination, I wasn’t sure about it. After all, I hadn’t come across it in any of the hours of research I have done for our vacation to Italy.

But, my friend spoke so highly of her Tuscan WithLocals guide that I decided to go for it. Booking a WithLocals tour was the best decision of our trip. I’m not kidding – it is the number one recommendation when people tell me they are traveling overseas or ask about our Italian vacation. We enjoyed our experience so much that when we decided to go to Venice last minute, we immediately booked a WithLocals guide to take us around the city. I don’t think I will ever travel overseas without booking a WithLocals experience. This post is not sponsored by WithLocals (affiliate links are used), and we paid for our experiences.

If you ever travel overseas – or dream of traveling overseas – read on and save this post. You are going to love WithLocals.

About WithLocals Private Tours & Experiences

WithLocals offers personalized, guided tours and experiences in 40+ cities around the world. With more than 800 guides and 1,200 experiences, WithLocals is designed to create experiences for tourists to “enjoy a city like a local.” Some of the types of bookings available include: food tours and tastings, home dinners, day tours, family experiences, night tours and workshops.

Some tours book out weeks in advance, while others are available almost immediately. We booked a tour about two weeks before our trip and a second one (after having such a positive experience) the day before. You will have less guides available if you look to book last minute.

Booking is very easy – simply sign up on the WithLocals website (you’ll get a $15 credit when you use this link), choose your experience and book it. You can also identify a guide and message them directly for the type of experience you are looking for. If the guide is available and able to help, they will create a custom experience for you to book. (This is what we did in Tuscany.)

WithLocals has an app and I found it to be very helpful when communicating with our guides. You can also book right through the app.

The Benefits of WithLocals

Here is a list of nine benefits of booking with WithLocals and why its worth booking a tour/experience with them.

Smaller group

Many of the tour companies book large groups. (We went on tours with 15-50 people.) This is not the case for WithLocals. Both of our experiences were just with Matthew, me and our guide.

Personalized Tour

WithLocals is built around the idea of creating personalized experiences for travelers. Because it is just you and your guide, everything is designed around what you would enjoy. For example, in Tuscany, we asked to go to a village that isn’t commonly visited by tourists. In Venice, we asked if there were any mask makers we could meet. Our guides created incredible, personalized experiences we never would have had on our own or with a large tour company.

Knowledgeable local guides

We were blown away by our guides’ knowledge of the areas they took us to. From history to culture, they could answer all of our questions with ease.

Affordable tour/experience

I would have expected that a private guide would be super expensive, but that is not the case with WithLocals. Our WithLocals guide is Venice was $60 for three hours, which we thought was a bargain. Also when you use this affiliate link to sign up, you will get a $15 credit to use on your booking. Prices vary by host and location.

Memorable

Some of our fondest memories made in Italy were with our WithLocals guides. The guides truly love what they do and go above and beyond to create beautiful memories for their guests. For instance, our guide Marco took us to a monastery in the middle of Tuscany that was built in 890. This is not something we would have ever discovered on our own. It was truly unforgettable.

You pick your guide

With large tour companies, you have no idea who your guide will be. But when you use WithLocals, you select your guide. Each guide has a photo and biography so you can get to know him or her a bit before your experience.

Transportation

For us, this was a big one because we did everything by foot and train in Italy. Our WithLocals Tuscan guide picked us up in his car and took us around Tuscany, enabling us to go places that we otherwise would not have seen.

Great photos

Having a guide with you means you don’t have to awkwardly ask strangers to take pictures of you. Our guides were happy to take pictures of Matthew and me whenever we asked. Some of my favorite photos from our trip happened during our WithLocals tours.

Available all over the world

WithLocals offers guided experiences all over the world, including: Belgium, Cambodia, Croatia, Czech Republic, England, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungry, India, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Morocco, Nepal, Philippines, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, the Netherlands, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and Vietnam. If you are planning a trip overseas, I hope you will book a WithLocals experience and that your guide is as wonderful as our guides were in Tuscany and Venice. (We had Marco in Tuscany and Adair in Venice.) Here is my referral link, which will save you $15 off your first booking.

For a truly local experience in a country, visit WithLocals and book a tour today. You will be so happy you did!