Withlocals is a private tour platform founded in 2013 in Eindhoven, in the Netherlands. The model is different from the ticketing marketplaces: it sells neither entry tickets nor seats on a coach, but puts travellers in touch with a local host who walks a closed group made up only of the people who booked together.
What it is and how it works
Every experience has a face and a name. Host profiles show a photo, a biography, the languages they speak, the routes they propose and the reviews they have collected: you choose the person before you choose the itinerary. Once you have booked, a chat with your guide opens, and there you agree the meeting point, the time, the pace and the subjects to dig into.
That personalisation is the actual product. A Withlocals tour has no fixed script: if architecture interests you it stretches that way, if you are travelling with children it shortens and changes route. In exchange, the platform gives up scale — in Venice the available hosts number in the dozens, not the hundreds ``.
Booking is not instant the way it is on a ticketing site: the host has to confirm availability, and the cancellation windows start running from that moment.
What it sells in Venice
The Venetian catalogue is made of walking. Three formats recur: the overview tour that links the landmarks with a few quieter corners, the food route between bacari (the city's stand-up wine bars) with a tasting of cicchetti (Venetian bar snacks), and the neighbourhood walk concentrated on Cannaregio, Castello or Dorsoduro, away from the flow around St Mark's Square.
On request, guides build itineraries to order: photography, craft workshops, the Jewish Ghetto, Venice with children. This is the ground on which the platform beats the generalist marketplaces, which sell standardised products.
What you will not find matters just as much. Withlocals does not sell tickets for the Doge's Palace, does not sell vaporetto (water bus) passes, and does not sell gondola rides as a product in their own right. If your itinerary includes museums, entry has to be bought separately and coordinated with your guide over chat. To build the rest of the programme, start from the things to do in Venice page.
Prices and fees
The price is quoted per group and not per person, and it is the single most important economic difference from every other platform. Adding people raises the total less than proportionally, so the cost per head falls as the group grows: heavy for two, reasonable at four or five.
On top of the tour price sits a platform service fee, shown explicitly before you pay. That is a different transparency choice from the marketplaces that fold everything into one final number: here you can see what goes to the intermediary, but you pay a separate line for it ``.
The fair comparison is not with the €25 group tour, which is a different product altogether. It is with a licensed tour guide hired directly: on that ground Withlocals prices are in line or slightly below, with the platform's payment protection on top.
Cancellation and refunds
This is where Withlocals departs from the industry standard, and it is the thing to understand before booking. There are three windows.
Immediately after booking there is a 24-hour grace period with a full refund, service fee included. It closes at whichever comes first: 24 hours from the host's confirmation, or 24 hours before the experience starts. If you book a tour setting off within the next 24 hours, the grace period does not apply at all.
Once the grace period has closed, and while more than 7 days remain before the experience, you can cancel and recover the tour price but not the service fee. From 7 days out no refund is due at all: the host is paid in full. If the guide is the one who cancels, you are refunded in full, service fee included.
Set against the free cancellation up to 24 hours before offered by almost every other platform, this is a strict policy. It is consistent with the model — a person has blocked out half a day for you — but you have to accept it knowingly. Book only on dates that are settled.
App, tickets and entry
The "Withlocals: Private Tours" app exists for iOS and Android and is mainly there for the chat with your host, the notifications and the location of the meeting point. There are no QR codes to hold up at a barrier: the experience begins when you meet a person.
In Venice the meeting point is the critical variable. Hosts tend to propose places that are identifiable and not crowded — a side campo, the foot of one specific bridge, the landing of a traghetto (the gondola ferry across the Grand Canal) — precisely to avoid the confusion at Rialto and San Marco. Pin the spot on your offline map and agree a backup phone number in the chat.
If the programme includes a museum, buy the ticket for the time slot you agreed and send your guide the confirmation: skip that step and the tour stalls in front of a sold-out entrance.
Customer support
The first line of support is the host, reachable in chat from confirmation until the end of the experience. For most practical problems — a delayed train, a change of time, rain — it is the fastest channel, because you are talking to the person who decides.
The second line is the platform's help centre, with detailed articles on cancellations, refunds and changes, plus email support. The working language is English: there is no equivalent of the dedicated Spanish- and Italian-language operations run by the southern European platforms. For bookings made through partners such as other marketplaces, the partner's policy applies and support has to be requested from them.
Reliability and user reviews
On Trustpilot Withlocals scores 4.7 out of 5 from around 1,830 reviews, with 85% at five stars and a company reply to 93% of negative ratings. It is the highest average among the platforms covering Venice, but the sample is two orders of magnitude smaller than the big marketplaces: it indicates a carefully run niche service, not a statistically equivalent figure.
The recurring complaints are almost always about the cancellation policy rather than the quality of the guides. People who had to call off inside seven days and got nothing back write harsh reviews, and it is useful to know that before you book.
Who it suits
It suits parties of three, four or five who want a dedicated guide at an acceptable cost per head. It suits anyone with specific needs — reduced mobility, small children, a precise thematic interest — that a group tour cannot accommodate. It suits anyone whose dates are already locked in.
It does not suit solo travellers or couples on a tight budget, anyone still unsure of their programme, or anyone shopping for entry tickets: Withlocals does not sell them.
Quick comparison with the alternatives
| Platform | Type of product | Price | Cancellation | Trustpilot |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Withlocals | Private tours with local hosts only | Per group, plus service fee | 24 h grace, then up to 7 days, then nothing | 4.7 / 5 (1,832 reviews) |
| Civitatis | Group tours, excursions, transfers | Per person, low prices | Free 24–48 h before | 4.5 / 5 |
| Headout | Entry tickets and experiences | Per person, margin built in | Free up to 24 h before | 4.4 / 5 |
| Venezia Unica | Passes, ACTV transport, civic museums | Official fares | Rigid, barely flexible | 1.5 / 5 (29 reviews) |
The averages cannot be compared without looking at the sample sizes: 1,832 reviews are not 192,000, and 29 reviews describe nothing at all. The full picture is on the booking platforms page.
Like all the others, Withlocals does not sell the Venice access fee, which is paid only on the City of Venice portal.
The same experiences, bookable on Tiqets
Verdict
Withlocals does one thing and does it well: it puts a local guide at your group's exclusive disposal, with a route agreed in chat before you set off. In Venice it is the best way to see the sestieri away from San Marco without chasing a raised umbrella. The per-person cost punishes couples and cancelling inside seven days returns nothing, so book only when the dates are final, and remember that museum tickets remain your job.