Why this exists
Book the guide, not the platform
I gave my first private tour in Berlin in 2006. Twenty years on, I still think the best way to understand history is to stand where it happened, with someone who has spent years learning what happened there.
Those people are disappearing from view.
Most tours are now sold through a handful of booking platforms. They promise to empower independent guides. In practice they take 20–30% of every booking, rank guides by rules nobody outside can see, and keep the relationship with the traveller for themselves. A historian who has walked the Somme for thirty years ends up on the same page as a segway ride, competing on price, on someone else's terms.
That's how local expertise disappears: not all at once, but one discount at a time.
History-Tours.com is my answer. It's a passion project, not a business. It lists only guides whose tours are about history. It takes no commission. It sells no rankings. Every link goes straight to the guide.
I feel an obligation to gather as many like-minded guides and explorers as I can, so that people who care about the past can find the people who know it best, and pay them directly.
If you're travelling: book direct, ask your guide hard questions, and tell them where you found them. If you're a guide: claim your listing, and tell me who else belongs here.
Matt Robinson, Berlin
Six promises
Only history
Every guide passes the same published inclusion policy.
No commission, ever
We never take a share of a booking. No affiliate links either.
No paid rankings
The order of results is never for sale.
Every link goes direct
To the guide's own website, never to a booking platform.
Guides control their listing
Correct it or remove it at any time, no questions asked.
Open about who runs it
I run Berlin Experiences. It's listed under the same rules as everyone else, and says so.
Founding Guides
The guides who claimed their listings in the first six months. They carry the Founding Guide mark for good.
Editorial independence
Every listing is researched from the provider's own website, checked against our inclusion policy and approved by an editor. Summaries are written by us, and every fact has a recorded source and a “last checked” date.
Listings are free, and they stay free. Nothing on the site is for sale: not a listing, not a badge, not a place in the results.
I also run Berlin Experiences, a private tour company in Berlin. It's listed under the same rules as every other provider, and its profile says so.