Operator PRO: a professional page for a single guide

Most guides have a licence, a phone and a page on a booking platform. What they do not have is a place where the work is documented: the places they guide, the routes they walk, the languages they speak. Operator PRO is that place, at 99 dollars a year.

1. What the plan is

Operator PRO is the professional account for one person. It is not a booking engine and it is not a directory: it is the page where a guide’s work becomes visible and linkable.

It gives four things:

• an operator page with your name, your languages and your specialisms;
• the place pages you contribute to, with the photographs and their credits;
• the itineraries you build, with the route and the GPX file;
• the badge that says you are a professional on the archive.

The plan also sells: an itinerary goes on sale from its own page as a road-book or a virtual tour, Cultural Heritage Online runs the payment and the receipt, and 80% of the price net of tax is yours. How to sell one is the subject of the next article.

2. Why a guide needs a page, not only a profile

A profile on a platform answers one question: is this guide available? A page answers the questions a traveller asks before booking: what does this guide know, where does this guide walk, in which language, and what will I see?

The difference is the difference between being listed and being chosen. A platform lists; a page explains. And a profile is rented: the platform can change its rules, its ranking or its price, and the profile changes with them. The page stays, and it is the page a hotel or a museum can link.

3. What the page does for the work

Three things, all measurable over time:

• it is a permanent address a traveller can save, and a hotel or a museum can link;
• it is the destination of every social post and every email, instead of a profile that changes its rules;
• it is the record of what you have published, which is what a journalist, a tour operator or a conference organiser checks.

A guide who works with hotels and museums needs exactly this: a page that someone else can cite.

4. Who it is for

• A licensed guide who works alone and wants a professional presence.
• A guide who builds routes and wants them documented, with the file a guest can follow.
• A guide who works with hotels, museums and tour operators and needs a page to be linked.

A guide who works alone does not need a company page; a guide who works with other guides, or who runs a programme of visits, does, and that is the Organiser plan. The two plans are for two ways of working, not for two sizes of the same thing.

5. How to start

Three steps:

• 1. Create the account and complete the operator page: name, languages, specialisms, the places you guide.
• 2. Publish the first itinerary: the theme, the stops with their sources, the route.
• 3. Link the page from your site, your email signature and your social profiles.

The first itinerary is the hard part; after that, the page grows with the work. And the page is not a curriculum: it is a place. A visitor does not read it to check your qualifications; they read it to decide whether to walk with you, and the routes are the answer.

6. What it costs, and what it replaces

Ninety-nine dollars a year is less than a single guided visit for a group, and it is the price of a page that works all year. What it replaces is not a website: it is the profile on a platform, the PDF sent by email, the page that a hotel cannot link because it is a listing.

What it does not replace is the work: the page shows what you publish, and what you publish is still your routes, your notes, your languages. The plan gives the place; the content is yours.

Build your professional page with Operator PRO, 99 dollars a year: /pro-operatori/

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