New site offers unusual tours of Prague

Tour de Beer, Hula-hoop in Prague, Roast Sausage or River Valley Jogging Tour – these are just some of offers on a new website called Guidilo. The unusual travel service wants to help visitors from all around the world to get to know Prague through an authentic experience. Basically anyone living in Prague can register on the site to offer their own original tour of the city.

Photo: Karolína Rezková, Czech Radio

Thousands of tourists visit the Czech capital every day, most of them following a similar route taking them to the same old sites, such as Prague Castle, Old Town Square or Charles Bridge. The founders of a new travel service, Guidilo, say tourists are fed up with the traditional way of travelling and want to experience something unusual and unexpected. Tereza Vítková is one of the founders:

“People are fed up with traditional mass tourism and they want to spend their money on something special. They want to experience something different. They want to have memories that they can bring home, instead of just visiting places listed in a guidebook and ticking them off one by one. So we are offering something original and new.”

Anybody living in Prague who believes they have something unusual to offer to the visitors can contact Guidilo; if they are approved, they are listed on the site. Tourists can choose from different categories, such as architecture, nightlife or adventure. As of today, Guidilo has around one hundred registered local guides.

One of them is Radim Prahl, whose "Running Tours Prague" have been “up and running” for over a year now. Professionally a social worker, he says he was always been interested in history and architecture and as a Prague native, he knows what tourists want to see on the tour:

Photo: archive of Guidilo

“The tour starts at the guest’s hotel and from there we usually run to Prague Castle, we definitely visit the Lesser Town and the Old Town, we pass over the Charles Bridge. The route is of course adjusted to what the traveller has already seen of the city. If they are staying for a longer time they might be interested only in places they haven’t seen yet. So we customize it according to their wishes.”

The founders of Guidilo, Tereza Vítková and Eva Belokostolská, plan to launch their project within the next few weeks. In the future, they would like to expand to other Czech cities as well as beyond the border, to Slovakia and Poland.