Living in Czechia: What Free Tour Companies Don't Want You to Know!

 

Tourists watching the Astronomical Clock chime

 

After my mom left Prague, I put all of my time and energy into getting a job as a tour guide. This meant studying the history of the Czech lands from 600 B.C.E. to now, all the significant names and dates, and more importantly, all the enthralling stories and how to tell them. It also meant learning the streets, what establishments to recommend, what to warn tourists about; compiling a list of bars, cafés, restaurants, and pubs based on cuisine, location, price range, dietary restrictions, atmosphere, etc. Then you need souvenir shops, museums, music venues, night clubs, theaters, tattoo parlors, crystal shops, and so on. You patch together a tour with two parts where you combine a little history, a little legend, a tourist tip here, a humorous anecdote there. Then, perhaps most importantly, you build your sales pitch into it, because ultimately your income depends on a very delicate balance of showmanship and solicitation.

I applied to work as a tour guide for ‘Sandemans New Europe Tours’. The branding of the company is totally wacky because it was founded by a narcissist named Chris Sandeman who has very few business responsibilities at this point except for showing his face every once and awhile (although that may have changed now post-covid), and it’s my understanding that he refuses to remove his name from the brand even though it makes the company sound like something you’d see advertised in a 1950s catalog. The company invented the very successful “Free Tour” concept which you now see many others copy throughout the world. The idea is that customers take a tour without any admission fee, and then the guides explain to them right at the beginning that, well, yes, it is called ‘free tour’ but, you see, only ill-bred cretins walk away without paying the guide what’s appropriate for a three hour tour chock-full of useful tidbits without which you’d be totally lost. And so at the end you put out your hat or whatever flourish you choose and the people come to show their appreciation, oftentimes bountifully. 

There are some additional layers to this rigamarole. You, as a guide, are a contractor with Sandemans. You come to give tours, and Sandemans is the reason that people show up – that is, Sandemans pays for all the marketing. Thus, once your tour has ended and you’ve collected the tips from the tour, you must pay them back for those services. You owe the company a small fee per person on your tour, around $2.50. That means if each person tips you $5.00, you split the profits with the company. If each person comes to you with a few coins and some pocket lint, you can end up owing the company money. Your tourist headcount comes from a photo that is taken at the top of the tour. Then they count the number of people in the photo and that’s what they charge you. 

As you may imagine, this is a pretty loosey-goosey system to use for charging you at the end of your tour, and a number of things can happen along the way that totally screw you out of your hard earned cash. For instance: a stag party (British bachelor party) is in town to whoop it up with their ol’ pal Bertie for the weekend and decide they ought to do something other than drink all day. One of the more refined chaps, Reginald, suggests taking one of those walking tours they’ve heard so much about and the group kind of moans and frowns and says it sounds ‘dreadfully boring’ or that they are ‘full up on education’. ‘Well,’ says the erudite one, ‘if we don’t enjoy it we can simply leave at the half.’ Then a chorus of ‘Right-o’ and ‘chin-chin’ and whatever other silly things the British enjoy saying. So you get 9 lads with the collective energy of a walking bar room. Not only do they get counted at the beginning and then depart 30 minutes in, disappearing somewhere between the Estates Theater and the Powder Tower, but their rowdy behavior and general disinterest in anything you have to say causes the attention of the crowd to dissipate, and once you’ve lost that it’s difficult to get it back.

Tour groups’ arbitrary and restive quality causes tour guides to develop many defense mechanisms in order to prevent losing money. One trick is to get the tour going before the company’s overworked and underpaid assistant can manage to take the photo. This often happens by accident during the busy season, and if there’s no photo, the count is usually based on someone’s quick guesstimate and is totally up for debate. Another approach is working your relationship with the employees who process the count. The work station where these transactions take place is also the spot where tourists buy other paid-tours, and furthermore it is in the middle of a busy restaurant. It’s a location that can be wildly chaotic and stressful, and a little bit of empathy goes a long way (especially when many other guides are fairly intense and emotional people). There was an understanding: sometimes you have a bad tour, sometimes it hails in the middle of summer and everyone scatters, sometimes you have a massive family with 6 children, two in strollers and a grandma in a wheel chair, and a father who keeps interrupting you to ask questions that are supposed to make him look smart for asking them and you look dumb for not knowing, like if the round thing on the top of that office building is a helicopter pad, or why the Prague government doesn’t clean their 300-year-old-buildings more often, and how they should be ashamed to let their buildings look like this (I mean, what do you say to this kind of thing?), and then the whole family leaves you with a measly 50 crown coin ($2.50). This understanding – that some tours go especially poorly – meant that you could complain to the Sandeman’s middle manager and they may remove a few people from your count. Abuse this privilege, however, and you may find yourself getting less favors.

A disappointing side-effect of this business model is that a lot of race-based profiling comes into play. It’s so universal that even the Sandemans employees take pity on you when they see you with a tour group including a majority of certain ethnic groups. Indians have an especially bad reputation, and guides theorize that this stems from a very serious emphasis in their culture on getting goods for the lowest price possible, as well as a caste system which means anyone wealthy enough to travel is used to treating service people (e.g. tour guides) as servants who are certainly not going to get a generous tip at the end of their day’s work. Initially I was appalled by the blatant racism, but the job has such a large amount of luck built into it that it’s difficult to keep your worldview from distorting into evaluating people based on how well they pay you at the end of your tour. 

A big part of the way Fortuna spins for a guide depends upon the splitting up of the group at the beginning. Tensions during this period are understandably high. First of all, Sandemans is not the only company running ‘Free Tours’ in Prague. I can recall at least 8 companies, and 5 of them with the same starting point as us. The reason for this is partly because Prague’s city government has banned soliciting tours to people on the street. Thus, all 5 companies must stand with their branded umbrellas in one small corner on the Old Town Square. So people generally come to the corner after booking a tour online, where they see yellow, blue, purple, red and black, and our red umbrella. (Scintillating gossip abounds regarding the competition, their employees, their guides, their tours, etc.) Once the tourists manage to find the right umbrella, they are greeted by a guide, given a paper number, and asked to please wait in some specific area for the tour to begin. Some guides use this opportunity to re-frame the narrative about how these ‘Free Tours’ actually work. And they do this in a variety of friendly or aggressive manners. Something like: 

Are you here for the free walking tour?

Yes.

Have you taken one of our tours before?

No.

Okay so it’s a three hour tour, we visit the Old Town, the New Town, and the Jewish Quarter. The tour is free to join and then you give us a tip at the end of whatever you think we deserve.

There’s a lot of crucial signaling that goes on in this conversation, which makes the guides take on the crazed look and nervous gesticulation of used car salesmen. It’s hectic--people are crowding around, ducking below countless brightly colored umbrellas, trying to hear what’s being said, and figure out what they are supposed to do next. Many are somewhere along the spectrum of drunk and hungover, others are severely jet-lagged. Personally, I believe this is an opportunity to start to make a connection with the tourists. My tactic is to be friendly but firm. Experienced guides usually have a fun fact memorized about every country a tourist might be from, and build rapport that way. Oh you’re from Maldives? Flattest country in the world! One guide in particular likes to say hello in each customer’s respective language. Some try to make mediocre and/or confusing jokes which serve to further befuddle an already disoriented person. I would give you an example but they were so cringy that I think I purposefully blacked them out of my memory. Others are outright hostile, especially to tourists of those notoriously stingy races, in the hopes that they’ll be turned off and leave altogether. Where are you from? Malaysia? Do you speak English? Are you sure? You know this is an English tour, there’s going to be a lot of confusing words, fast talking, so on. It’s three hours, you sure you can handle that? I’m standing nearby with a grin/grimace that tries to apologize and break the tension all at once.

Unless you’re in the low season, a tour will almost certainly have to divide into groups. To make this as fair as possible, the guides hand out the aforementioned numbers and use them to divide the group into half or thirds, whatever creates groups of around 30 or less. That means, at this point, the two or more guides at the meeting point do not know who is going to have which customers, and this is where a lot of superstition comes into play. I’ve heard one guide accost another for saying the word ‘tip’ when speaking to the tourist. With a patriarchal tone: 

"Not a tip. Don’t say tip. A tip is coins you throw away at the bar, we’re talking about the price of the tour. They name their price at the end of the tour."

Or for saying ‘free’ when describing the tour: 

"It’s not a free tour, it’s a city walking tour. You say free, they think free, and it’s over." 

Then there’s the problem of large groups. If a group of 6 or more comes, it’s bad luck, because while you get charged per-person, groups tend to pay as a pack (and are usually made up of young backpackers who thought the free-tour was a perquisite their hostel provided -- I am ashamed to admit that I was previously one of these travelers). The group’s tip always comes from one member who pays for all of them. They tuck a 100 crown bill into your hand and slink away to join the rest of their group who walk briskly to the nearest pub and hide. 

At this point, I could go into detail about the convoluted math involved in dividing a hoard of tourists into groups, but it will be tedious. Essentially, it involves some pretty difficult mental math before the tour begins, and all while managing the crowd with pleasant replies to questions like how long is the tour? and when will the tour begin? and will you be our guide? all of which could be answered with that depends on how quickly I can solve this fiendishly convoluted calculation in my head. This is just the tip of the tour-guiding-damage-control-iceberg. If there’s rain in the forecast, you want it to rain at the start of the tour so the meek will depart before it begins. If there’s numerous tourists from non-English-speaking countries, you simplify your language and run it faster. If there’s elderly or disabled people, avoid stairs. If there’s American children, prepare yourself for lots of questions and if you engage the kids it can almost guarantee you a really nice tip at the end. If you have one or two guys (and it’s always guys) who are talking back to you, interrupting your stories to share the spotlight, you have to kibosh that behavior right away or else they’ll control the focus and you'll lose the respect of your audience. If it’s a large group, increase volume and gestures, if it’s small, increase familiarity and intimacy. If you have Czechs on your tour, respect their presence, be mindful of your satirical cultural anecdotes, and draw out an occasional nod of confirmation to corroborate your know-how. They’ll tip you shite but the others will be impressed.

The other logistical nightmare is the break, and this is, once again, where a sickening amount of manipulation and strategizing comes into play behind the scenes. In most cities where Sandemans operates, the break is 10 minutes for bathroom and a coffee or a beer at a café. In Prague, we partner with a restaurant/bar/club/Airbnb which is a truly absurd place to do business. I’ve seen topless strippers and midgets running by me while I’m eating my post-tour dinner (entertainment for bachelor parties). One guide who enjoyed elicit pastimes got spooked by a cop entering the bar with handcuffs, only to discover that those handcuffs would be used on British women paying top dollar to see some fake policeman shake his crime fighting ass. During the day, things are comparatively tame, and Sandemans uses the restaurant as a location to sell tickets to their “select tours” and other local attractions they promote during tour breaks. So at halftime, while the guests are resting, you turn quickly from tour guide to salesperson.

If you sell a lot of Select Tours, you pay less per person on Free Tours. Some guides were magnificent at selling, in this way that was kind of legendary and mysterious. Knowing their personalities, I suspect it has something to do with their intoxicating confidence. They told their tales with a raised chin, puffed chest, and gliding arms. Arms that seemed like they could embrace the whole city if they wanted to, bringing it in with you included. This confidence meant that if they told you to buy a beer tour and a castle tour, you’d march right over to that desk and demand it, and then you would run back to the guide after the break and gloat about how good you did. One top seller possessed an imposing teddy-bear body and charmingly ambiguous accent; he’s originally from Brazil but his English has a faintly British lilt to it. It made him seem intelligent but not quite snobbish. He also had a sixth sense for what tourists wanted, and while others were busy trying to recall what date the battle of white mountain was (1620), he was taking groups on creative routes through passageways to a spooky church with a mummified severed hand hanging from the ceiling, and stunning them with unbelievable stories all told with that same steady voice of absolute certainty.

Another was a Spanish guide who frequently attained an unheard of 100% conversion rate (# of customers who bought a tour / # of customers total). Spanish tourists are known for buying tours at a much higher rate than their English speaking counterparts (there are many theories as to why, amateur anthropologists eat your heart out) but this is still extraordinary. And while the Spanish are generally a more cheerful group of guides (or at least more outwardly emotive) this man, with his towering height and long wavy locks of hair, always seemed to be smiling and laughing and enjoying himself greatly. As most joy is wont to be, his was infectious, and perhaps addictive. Maybe purchasing a Castle Tour ticket was one way to chase that high.

Finally, and the most curious case of all, was a young Belarusian woman with long blonde hair and an intensity so severe it made your fillings rattle. She remained at the top of our guide’s rankings for conversion rate almost every month, stupefying us all. When I was training to be a guide, I shadowed one of her tours. Apparently this is a privilege few have had. Other guides asked me, how does she do it, what’s her pitch? as if I was privy to some well-kept secret that others were dying to know. Frankly, her pitch didn’t seem to be anything special, but her tone and demeanor was captivating. If you had a split with her it was always stressful because she would be shouting at tourists from the very beginning, whether they were yours or hers, and she got people to fall in line. I remember once we were starting a tour on a day when the sky was bruised with coming rain. We had given out 17 numbers so far, and she was the second guide which meant that if another 15 people came to take a tour, we would have two small groups and she would have to work that day. Working meant little money because (it’s believed) people tip worse when the weather’s bad, and a high chance of downpour which meant people leaving mid-tour for some real financial trouble, besides it just being a lousy day walking around town. So she was actively discouraging people from coming on the tour with her signature fiery locution:  

"You don’t have rain jackets, what if it rains, what will you do? Think about it, seriously, because I don’t want you to join the tour if you leave when it starts to rain. Take the tour at 4pm, it should be done raining by then. I mean really, the weather today will be bad, it’s going to rain so hard and you’ll be miserable. Look at you, you look cold to me already, and you want to take a three hour tour? For three hours we will be in this weather, you understand that? Really, please, think about this. Come back tomorrow, it will be nicer tomorrow."

I guess everyone is secretly a glutton for punishment because not only did she kill on sales but her Trip Advisor reviews were all fragrant bouquets of compliment upon compliment.

So. Sales are one part of the bitter mid-tour cocktail. Another ingredient is diplomacy. We count on the wait staff to take our tour group’s orders, serve the food and drinks, and take payment in a timely manner so that we can get back on the street and finish up before the already lengthy 3-hour mark. Some of the staff at the restaurant are graciously speedy, others are excruciatingly slow. If you get a slow one, you have to keep on top of them. Once your group sits down, you casually ask the server: Could you take my group’s orders? Then when the group gets their food and drink, you watch the clock, try to remind the slow-sipping tourists that you aim to get out of there in 20 minutes or so, all without making them feel rushed or setting too solid of expectations in case you actually leave 50 minutes later and then they’re all feeling super peeved that they woofed down a burger and beer only to wait another half-hour in this stuffy pub. Once you’ve gone round and done your best to sell a tour or two, and just before people start shifting in their seats or dragging final fries through ketchup puddles, you go find the waiter and ask him, as nonchalant and pacific as possible, do you think you can grab the payment, I’m hoping to get out of here soon. In retrospect, maybe my politeness and passive aggression was the wrong approach. If I took the Belarusian tact and just started angry, I might get into a shouting match with the waiters but my customers would be back on the street in no time.

A third ingredient is timing. God help the guide arriving second to the break location. Your service will be slower, and your group will be seated farther from the ticket desk. To convince a tourist to buy a tour from someplace outside their immediate eye line is to perform a miracle. Even worse, if you don’t get your tourists to the ticket desk before the Spanish arrive, you can give up on selling altogether. Recall the Spanish speaking client’s reliability for purchasing tours – that means you get a line weaving through the restaurant that no English speaking tourist will have the patience to wait in. Not only are there so many of them, but they often socialize with the ticket reps, who are also often from Latin America, so there’s a lot of De dónde es usted? and the Por qué está en Praga? and Mi hija…

The break is also where you’ll lose people that realize halfway through they didn’t want to take a three-hour tour after all. If you catch them while they’re trying to sneak away, sometimes they’ll feel obligated to give you a few crowns or a warm handshake and some excuse. You can spot these flight risks early on. They stay at the back of the group, talking to each other. I developed different tricks to get them involved, but ultimately it is hard to know if anything is working. I found that the job became much more enjoyable once you gave up on controlling everything.

One of my favorite aspects of the job was the tour guides themselves. The job draws a wide variety of people, albeit all of them extroverted. I worked among ex-academics, actors, and musicians. One tour guide came from an Amish community, and another used to be a bullfighter in Spain. One of the Spanish guides I met was quite alcoholic, and would always be drinking in our partner restaurant on the days he wasn’t working. I would sometimes run into him in the middle of a tour, on our break. He spoke with an affecting mix of tenderness and grandiloquence, and he seemed to really savor each word that escaped his lips, his demeanor changing rapidly to match the tone of his present subject. He would appear shocked when telling unbelievable tales from history, severe when detailing the bitter cruelty of some long dead person’s fortune, somber when recounting a tragic event, and delighted when he described the peculiarities of some eccentric monarch’s habits. One time, he pulled me aside to tell me about the fantastic ass one of his tourists had, and somehow his genuine pleasure in reliving that beautiful sight made me feel as if I had been there, as if I had seen this stranger’s buttocks myself, and I, too, felt undone by its symmetry.

It truly was an enjoyable job. Being outside in a beautiful city, reliving the mysteries and history of the place with each group, did not get tiresome. As news of a new virus in China became increasingly present, our vision of the future grew foggy. How would this impact our jobs? I don’t think anyone anticipated the entire industry shutting down for over a year. At this point, however, I had come to care deeply for Annie and I wanted to stay here with her. So, I worked to learn computer programming during the long strange months of the early pandemic days, and wound up getting work at a small company here as a highly under-qualified website developer. Thus began yet another chapter.