The Local Guides program has been very useful to me since I started using it a few years ago.
I am a local guide myself, and I am always amazed to see how much people are willing to help and share using this program.
There are several reasons why I use the Local Guides program, and all those reasons brought together explain what the Local Guides program means to me.
First of all, the Local Guides program means Discovering.
I am always eager to find new places and locations. Using the Local Guides program allows me to discover places I would have never heard about without.
As an example, I lived in England for a year and a half. When I first arrived there, I had no clue about the nice places to go to, whether it was restaurants, pubs, hiking tracks… Using the Local Guides program was so helpful to me as it helped me finding and discovering amazing places.
When I was living there, I was, and I still am, using Google Maps so much, and I think it was the most useful app I had on my phone.
An other example was when I discovered a perched village called La Turbie on Google Maps which I had never heard about before, even though it is very close from my home town.
I took a wonderful picture of the Monte Carlo’s sea front from there :
Whether you are in a foreign country or in your home town, there is always something to discover with Google Maps thanks to the Local Guides community.
Which leads me to my second point : Sharing
Because I was using The Local Guides program so much for my own use, I thought “why not taking part of the community and helping other people ?”
This is when I started being active as a Local Guide, because when you receive help from people, it is more than fair helping them in return.
Since then, I have been leaving reviews, posting pictures, answering people’s questions about places I went to. And it is when you see how many people saw your reviews and pictures that you actually realise how useful you are as a Local Guide, and how useful all the Local Guides community is.
I find it very rewarding knowing that you are part of such a huge community of millions of people everywhere on Earth.
Sharing is also very important to me because I live in a very touristic area. Before online communities such as the Local Guides program, restaurants and other touristic establishments where I live used to take advantage of the fact that their customers were just passing by as 90% of them are tourists. Because of that, they did not have any regulars so they could have very expensive prices providing bad quality food or services.
Nowadays, this can not happen anymore because people are able to check informations of where they are going and therefore make themself an idea about what it is going to be like. This means every establishment has to make efforts and provide good standards because they know customers are always comparing and checking reviews.
This is why sharing is one of the most important values, and this is the reason why I use the Local Guides program a lot.
Which brings us to my last point : Bringing people together
The Local Guides program reunites millions of people helping eachother by sharing opinions, reviews, pictures and knowledges about places and locations all around the world. And I find it amazing to see how helpful and efficient we can be on the Local Guides program, thanks to our “population” and our willingness to help eachother.
Even though we all are in different places of the planet, we still are united and we are all part of the Local Guides Family, which allows us all to discover, share and form a community that unites us all together.
All of these reasons explain why I have been taking part of the Local Guides program for a few years now, and they sum up pretty well what the Local Guides program means to me.