Withlocals is a marketplace for experiences hosted by locals. You browse experiences by city, pick one, and book a date and time through the site or app.
Two kinds of experiences
Experiences on Withlocals fall into two product types:
Host offers are experiences that individual hosts design and run themselves. Each host offer has a single host who set the title, itinerary, photos, and price, and personally runs the experience with guests.
Withlocals Originals are experiences designed by Withlocals. The title, itinerary, meeting point, photos, and price are set by Withlocals, and several hosts in the city can run them. When you book a Withlocals Original, you pick the host you want to go with from the list of hosts offering that experience. You can compare hosts by their photo, bio, reviews, and availability, and book with the one you prefer.
Both types work the same way from a booking and payment point of view. The main difference is who designed the experience and, for Originals, that you choose which host runs it for you.
What you do as a guest
Find a destination using the search bar on the home page. As you type, it suggests cities, categories and experiences, and you can search all experiences for your words.
Open an experience to see the description, photos, host profile, itinerary, reviews, and price.
Pick a date, the number of adults, and the number of children, then go to checkout.
Pay with card or another supported method at checkout.
For most experiences your booking is confirmed right away. For a small number of experiences you'll wait for the host to accept it.
Confirmation and payment
Most experiences on Withlocals are instantly confirmed. When you complete the checkout, your payment method is charged right away and the booking is confirmed immediately, with no host approval step.
Some experiences require the host to accept your booking first. On those, your payment is held but not charged at checkout. Your booking shows as Unconfirmed, and the booking page tells you by when the host needs to confirm: within 48 hours, or before 6 hours ahead of the start if that comes first. Once the host accepts, the payment goes through and the booking becomes Confirmed. If the host does not accept in time, the hold is released and you are not charged.
You can tell which type of experience you're booking from the Instantly Confirmed label on the experience page.
Experiences you can book
You can browse experiences in categories like food tours, city highlights tours, off the beaten track tours, night tours, day trips, cooking classes, and workshops. Experiences list the duration, price per person, maximum group size, and which languages the host speaks.
See What types of experiences are available for the full list.
Good to know
You can save experiences to your favorites by tapping the heart icon on any experience.
The checkout shows the maximum group size set by the host. Larger parties can request a personalized offer.
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