My experience as a Local Guide in my hometown, after 6 years abroad

The Local Guides program for me is when technology and human connection blend to generate an incredible world of possibilities, access to honest information and user satisfaction. I’ve traveled extensively throughout the world and have always used Google Maps, I have even used it to create a route map for my one-month India trip back in 2019.

Every time I traveled, the first thing I had in mind was being able to find the places I wanted to visit, and I never found a tool as great as Google Maps; it didn’t work just as a means to find a specific location, but most importantly to share a little gratitude to those places that somehow made me feel like at home: from small family-owned restaurants, to big hotels with outstanding service.

After finishing my studies in China and returning to my home country, I realized that a lot of places in my own city were not listed on Google Maps, or there was very little information about them; so I figured that like me, there are countless travelers looking for that specific place they so desperately need, or an honest review that will tip the balance and make them choose whether to go to a place or not. That’s when I decided to become a Local Guide. At the very beginning I had no idea of what the program was and was writing reviews merely for the purpose of helping people. After one of my first posts reached almost 3000 views I was so thrilled and happy that it gave me the confidence to keep doing it. After a few other reviews, I understood how important it is to add pictures to my reviews, since photography can provide so many more advantages when traveling, locating one’s hotel, finding a specific street or just looking for a nice place to dine.

One of the greatest things that happened to me was when I wrote a review for a small pizza shop near my home. When I found it, it was somehow hidden from view and not so many costumers were in. I usually like to rate a place depending on the variety of the food they offer, so as a vegetarian I always want the places I go to at least have a few options for me, so I wrote about how incredibly satisfied I was with their service, their varieties of pizzas and the super affordable prices. A few days later, a response came from them and It was the sweetest response ever.

A few months later, I took a friend with me to the little pizza place. Went I got there, I was happily surprised to see that the place had grown a lot, they had chairs outside, and it was full of customers! I found the manager and asked him if it had been him the guy who answered my review, he said his wife had done it, thanked me for it and told me that the place had actually grown a lot in the last months. He told me that user’s reviews of the place had made an actual impact on their sales and was very thankful for the it. He even offered me a free sample of a new vegan pizza they would be introducing in a few weeks. I don’t know to what extent my review helped this small pizza place grow, but what I felt when he thanked me for it was real joy, the magic of knowing that my review had not been for nothing and that they were happy to offer a greater and better service to all their customers. I believe this is how the world should be, a place where we use all the tools available to us to help each other, to lift each other up, and to understand that every little act of kindness is oftentimes what people need the most in their lives to keep going forward.

I realized that Local Guides is an organic movement with great potential to become the world’s largest review platform. From the accuracy of the maps and Geo-location to the incredibly honest, unaltered and unbiased reviews that common people post, I believe it is one of the tools for the future, a reference for people who truly care about helping each other, cause at the end of the day, that’s all it is about: giving a little bit of what we receive so that others can find their way through the city and be confident that they are being guided by people just like them who at some point were in the same position as them and ultimately felt the responsibility to tell the world about it.

Local Guides is not a movement of people sitting behind a screen praising a specific place or business, it’s about living for the experience, it’s about opening our hearts about something we’ve tasted or a place we’ve been, about accepting the responsibility that an honest review is not just completely necessary, it’s what’s fair for customers, staff, managers, and owners alike, and most of all: to realize how important it is to share with the world how those experiences impacted our lives. Google maps and the Local Guides Program could be a very modern GPS and review platform, but I prefer to call it collective awareness, sustainable growth and social innovation.

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