It’s a long journey, I started Local Guides Program some year ago, usually, I couldn’t find much time due to hectic job routine but as Hospitality Professional in Government Tourism Organization (i.e. Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation) it always fascinates me to write about Food, Tourist Attraction and other Historical Places around me. I always wanted to have my blog but due I couldn’t manage to start it yet. In meanwhile, I joined this Program some years before and find an opportunity to review, write about places, restaurants, and other attractions which always gave me feeling to help others and play a positive role for the community.
Now over time, this program means a lot to me, the speed of my leveling-up is not very fast but as I find some time now I am in a regular habit of spending more and more time on the Local Guides Program. It allowed me to be a Blogger and Guide at the same time. It is always very pleasurable to see how many people are getting benefitted from your reviews, posts, photos, videos, and lists from this program. It always gave me the feeling that I am continuously helping others.
I have started this program by reviewing places I have visited and answered questions about those places but after some time I started sharing pictures and now converting myself towards lists and videos as well. In this regard, badges gave a sense of competition and always encourage to do more and earn more titles. Hopefully, my performance will increase day by day. I felt that by spending some time with this Program I feel that it encouraged me to travel more, experience more and more places, explore new restaurants and other attractions near me. Now I try to manage more time for traveling, sharing about places. I am also planning to explore the Northern part of my country this year and share it.
I must put an example of how this program is helpful for the community for my most recent trip to Peshwar and obviously, that was my first visit there. That was a short trip planned by me on the weekend to taste the famous food of Peshwar. Being new to that city and knowing no one there it was very hard for me to find out the best options for food. I obviously, decided to get help through Google Local Guides Programs and I found amazing food options, their ratings, people’s experiences about them and directions. After that, I realized that how much this program is helpful for the community and I decided to create lists of famous parks, restaurants, and places so that anyone coming to my city i.e. Rawalpindi can get benefit from it. In this regard, I already started two lists and some more are coming very soon.
In my final words about the Local Guides Program, this is beneficial in many ways for the community, good for helping each other and best for sharing your experience with others so that they could benefit from your good experience and can avoid bad experiences.