When you book a hotel or catch a flight while traveling the world, you have an idea of the kind of hospitality standards you can expect. Booking a guided tour is a different story. No matter the city or the activity, you’re often gambling on quality. After nearly 20 years leading tours across different continents, Steven Garcia, the founder and CEO of Empire Tours, is working to change that.
“Over the past few decades, travel consolidated around trusted, recognizable standards almost everywhere except guided experiences,” Garcia says. “When travelers book a hotel room or an airline seat, they know roughly what standard of care and service to expect. But when they book a walking tour in one city, a bus tour in another, and an architecture boat cruise in a third, the experience can seem like an unpredictable coin flip.”
Visitors in new cities might have very limited time. When they book a guided tour that ends up being generic or disappointing, they often don’t have the flexibility to book with another company the next day. “Travelers might feel like they’re playing ‘experience roulette’ with the part of the trip they’ll actually remember,” Garcia says.
While some guided experiences are fairly affordable, others add hundreds or even thousands of dollars to an already costly trip. Travelers can end up spending a substantial amount on a disappointing experience that casts a shadow over an entire trip.
When a guest had a poor experience, they may be less willing to book a guided tour at their next destination, even when the tour is run by a different operator. The whole category absorbs the loss of trust.
Other businesses in the travel industry solved this long ago. For hotels, airlines, and even car rental companies, brand recognition plays a significant role in establishing hospitality standards. Once a guest has had a positive experience with one hotel chain, they know exactly what to expect when they book again. And if they have a poor experience, they understand that experience reflects the brand, not the sector as a whole.
Right now, there doesn’t seem to be a true equivalent in the world of guided tours. “There should be a unifying, trusted name a traveler can carry with them from city to city,” Garcia says. “We believe that standard ought to exist.”
With more than a decade of hands-on operational experience, Garcia’s company, Empire Tours, is already working to establish that standard. Intentional practices like intimate group sizes, priority skip-the-line access at major landmarks, customized private group options, and local history guides chosen for their authentic expertise serve as the foundation behind the tour designs.
Whether they want to book the same tour in a new city or explore an entirely new experience, travelers know what to expect with Empire. Each meticulously researched tour is led by a guide with a passion for history, and guests go beyond the typical tourist spots.
Empire now runs tours across major cities in the United States and Europe. In New York, the Chinatown and Little Italy food tour treats guests to authentic NY-style pizza, explores mob history on Mulberry Street, and ends with artisanal cannolis and live music inside a 130-year-old bakery. In Milan, tour participants can experience a cruise on the city’s iconic canals and enjoy wine and risotto tasting in its historic Brera district.
In Washington, D.C., the Capitol Hill Guided Tour with Entry Tickets pairs reserved entry to the U.S. Capitol and the Library of Congress with a docent-led interior tour and an expert local historian.
And where a concept works well, Empire brings it to a new city, adapting it to local character. Visitors who enjoy the popular Chicago Gangsters and Ghosts tour can find similar themes in New York and in London. In Washington, D.C., which has far less gangster lore, a spies and ghosts variation can be found. Each tour is tailored to the city it’s in, and the fact that the same idea works in a variety of cities helps travelers who are looking for a brand they can follow from one place to the next.
That instinct is the one hotel groups have built on for decades. “Once guests take a tour with us in New York or Chicago, the first question they ask when planning their next vacation is whether we operate in Paris or London”, notes Garcia. “They don’t want to roll the dice on a total stranger. They want to know the guide waiting on the sidewalk genuinely cares about doing it right”.
“A decade on the ground is what convinced us that a hospitality standard for guided tours doesn’t exist yet, and building it is the work we’re taking on now,” he says. “That ambition is bigger than anything we’ve done so far.”
