The Best Apps For Booking Tours & Activities

If you're well traveled and crave more insight into a locale than the typical free walking tour, try Context Travel. They set themselves apart by hiring Ph.D and MA level scholars to lead tours that provide deep, intellectual insight for culturally rich cities across the world. We joined one explaining the intricacies of Japanese zen gardens in Kyoto and it was magnificent. They're typically a bit more expensive than other tours, but considering the quality and how different they are we think they're worth it.

No one's going to know a place better than locals, at least according to ToursByLocals. It's a marketplace that connects travelers with local guides, vets the guides to ensure quality, and takes care of the payments to ensure guides deliver on what they promise. These locals do post their own tours, but what's even better is they make it easy to contact these guides directly to set up custom private tours that cater directly to your interests and needs. No cookie cutter tours here. They should just default the tours to "Places to take pictures that'll get the most likes."