I have been a local guide since 2016 and I love it!! When I first started, I did not even know that there is such an opportunity that regular people like me can contribute to the map and add their photos and reviews and suggest edit locations and business hours for a store etc. I thought that only certified people who only work for Google can do it!
As I kept contributing and gaining more points, I got excited and passionate about sharing my experience with other googlers and google mappers by adding more photos and writing reviews and reposed to peoples questions as I was also reading other local guides’ reviews and asking questions about places that they have visited to make a decision which Hotel, park, restaurant, bar and other places to go to.
Local guide has become a hobby and passion for me, and honestly opened my eyes on many things that I was paying that much attention before. For example, the place I visited whether it has handicapped available or not, if the place offers certain other services such Wi-Fi, parking spaces, bathrooms and so forth and that’s how I try my best to answered all those question and write a review along with posting some pictures in order to help people in my city and other places and countries I have visited to provide them a peace of mind when they want to explore or visit those places.
I would like to say that I’m sincerely honored to be a local guide, it means a lot to me for the reasons mentioned above and for other reasons that I get to learn about new places and try to help other at the same time. Because of local guide now millions of people can share ideas in one platform and learn from each other’s experience and actively interact together and become best guides.
Local guide also means stay up-to-date and working towards gaining more points and make google map richer with great reviews and photos and videos and add places to the map that were not exist on it before. For the past couple years and because travelling and road trips are my favorite interest, I’m glad that I was able to add some new places to the map and enrich google map with lots of videos and photos of those interesting places that I have visited and giving accurate descriptions to some that worth exploring.
So, in summary, local guide program means a lot to me. It makes me stay active, knowledgeable and informed and I hope I will get chosen this year to participate in local guide connect 2020 in order to sharpen skills and learn more in depth about how to be a better local guide and meet other local guides from around the world.?
