A couple days ago, CityLab had an article about a fledgling sharing economy start up called Lokafy that pairs tourists with local residents willing to act as tour guides to the “real” areas of their city. Lokafy is so fledgling that it is only in Paris and Toronto with plans to shortly start the service in New York City.
What grabbed my attention about Lokafy was that they value people with artistic temperaments as guides.
Samra recruits “Lokafyers” through the “creative gigs” section on Craigslist. “I think it’s really great for travelers to meet the artists in a city because artists are the ones who kind of step back and interpret life and soak in what’s going on around them,” she says. She views the local guides as something between a tour leader and a friend.
Travelers can expect to see the hidden gems, says Samra. In Toronto, one Lokafyer took her guests to St. Lawrence Market by way of side streets so that they could see street art they may have overlooked.
This concept appealed to me on many levels. It provides a little flexible employment for people, especially artists. It exposes tourists to the work of local artists and helps them become invested in the city in ways they might not have on the usual tourist circuit.
It also gives creatives an opportunity to practice talking to regular people about art, allowing them to make mistakes and get feedback in a relatively low stakes environment.
As with other sharing economy services, I wondered in the back of my mind if this service would be able to scale up and still maintain its intimate connection with tourists. Just as real estate companies have come to dominate AirBnB listings in some cities, tour operators may end up taking advantage of the Lokafy’s image to the point where tourists frequently find that their local tour guide has ushered them on to a full tour bus.
It occurred to me that the value of this idea goes beyond tourism. Even if Lokafy doesn’t take off or spread to smaller cities around the U.S., a similar service sponsored out of the chamber of commerce, local arts council or convention and visitor’s bureau would be great for new residents.
Just moved to Columbus, OH; Birmingham, AL; Chattanooga, TN and want to get to know your city but don’t really know where to begin?
What if you could get a pre-screened personal guide to take you around to many interesting corners of the city, point out hidden treasures and provide historical insight into things you see everyday on the way to work, deepening your appreciation of your new home in ways the printed/web visitors’ guides can’t?
Only problem I see with this program becoming popular is that either: 1) You become good friends with the person who hired you as a tour guide. So should you be charging them to hang out tomorrow? or;
2) Your current friends think you are so awesome they want you to give tours to their friends and family for free, or;
3) Just like with your art practice, people think you shouldn’t need to be paid to have fun, ignoring the fact that you have spent time scrupulously assembling notes and plans for different neighborhoods.
If you have been reading my blog for the last year or so, I see this as an extension of the general “talking to strangers” concept I have been collecting and making attempts to implement.
I’ve always found sharing economy really fascinating, and I firmly believe that the trend of sharing economy will be leading the future for a fairly long period of time. And there’s no doubt artists are in this trend. So I feel so inspired and encouraged by this post!
This idea of pairing tourists with local artists to help them explore a city’s “hidden” artistic beauty is awesome. It gets the essence of sharing economy: finding mutual beneficiary and economical substitutes/ alternatives. Like it mentioned in the post, for customers (travelers), they get to see the place they visit in the view of an experienced insider of this community/ city/ culture in a more affordable way; and for guides/ artists, they can have opportunities of either flexible employment, or becoming invested, or getting valuable low-cost feedbacks on their arts. I totally agree that this idea goes beyond tourism. Thinking about all the possibilities, it might be able to function as culture communication, exchange, or consulting programs, and there could be more!
And you are right, of course there’re reasons to worry about whether or how this will go toward the right direction. Just like sharing economy in car sharing and home sharing, neither Uber nor Airbnb develop to today’s scale without any obstacles or making mistakes. The public worries about their safety issues, impact on traditional forms of economy, tax collection, and many all other aspects, there were strikes and protests, but these concerns and awarenesses gradually lead to better regulations and managements. So I am pretty positive about this, and I believe that artists are not only in this sharing economy trend, but will play significant roles in it. Lokafy could be an inspiring practice.
As for the problem discussed in the last part of this post, I believe every single artist has faced this kind of situation that be asked to do some work for free as friend or relatives. It’s an universal, permanent, headache-causing problem, LOL.
Hi Joe and Sai,
I am the founder of Lokafy, Kiran Samra. First of all I wanted to thank you for your feedback about Lokafy.
I truly believe that artists are great people for travellers to get to know. As I mentioned in the City Lab article, artists are the ones who take in everything around them, interpret what is going on in society and react to it through their art. As a visitor, you have limited amount of time in a place so meeting an artist and getting to know them on a personal level is a great way to feel really immersed in the culture. I use the term Lokafyers because they aren’t tour guides. Tour guides are professionals who are experts at leading groups of tourists around the city and have done research and have specialized knowledge (in addition many cities require licenses for tour guides). Lokafyers are not ‘experts’, they are people who have varied interests and experiences but who share an openness to share their city and their personal side with travellers. Part of the value for travellers is to get local insider knowledge, but what really differentiates Lokafy is that the experience is also about getting to know someone on a personal level; it is a social experience, like meeting a new friend. I just read read your post about Talking with Strangers, about the bus seats reserved for people who are open to meeting new people, it’s a great initiative as well.
In regards to the challenges you foresee for artists, if you truly make a new friend through Lokafy I don’t expect you would go through the platform to make a booking. But spending time with a good friend is enriching beyond the payment from Lokafy. It would be a success for Lokafy’s mission of helping people understand the world better. From a business perspective, this is not a problem either because if you met a great friend through Lokafy you would probably tell a lot of friends/family about it, which would generate even more awareness about Lokafy.
Also, I wanted to point out that a Lokafy tour shouldn’t involve extensive planning/research by the Lokafyers because the main attraction is the Lokafyer, and their perspective, experience, things they’re passionate about, etc.
The value of Lokafyer instead of a tour guide comes from the fact that a Lokafyer has something more to share (they are a musician, artist, writer, lawyer, etc.) so it is more interesting for a traveller. As you mention with scale it can be difficult to maintain the authenticity (with Airbnb in some cities you’re more likely to be greeted by a property manager who just wants to give you the keys and leave rather than an owner who wants to spend time with you and give you advice/tips). I believe that it’s important for Lokafy to not become the primary source of income for Lokafyers, just something fun someone does on the side for supplemental income. I have some ideas on how to address this issue as Lokafy becomes bigger but for now, I am focused on growth.
That was a rather long answer. Please reach out to me through the contact page on Lokafy if you would like to continue the discussion. And of course, follow us on Twitter and Facebook if you want to see how we expand.
Thanks,
Kiran