Need a guide for the day? There’s an app for that now

Viktor Marohnić recognized the problem as well. A software developer originally from Croatia and living in Brooklyn, New York, Marohnić is a skier, surfer, climber, and runner. He knew the benefits of hiring a guide for certain outdoor adventures, but he also understood first-hand the challenges of finding a good one. “You need a reliable, certified guide who has all the permits and is going to show you a good time,” Marohnić says. “But even if you find a guide service, you don’t really know who you’re going to go with.”

So, in 2018, Marohnić launched 57Hours, a platform that connects clients looking for a guided adventure with professionals trained to lead everything from ice climbing to mountain biking in both far-flung and close-to-home locations. The name comes from the number of hours you can squeeze in an adventure from 3 pm on a Friday to midnight on a Sunday. The goal of the site: Learn how to maximize your weekend. Using the app, you can book guided rock-climbing in Kentucky’s Red River Gorge or mountain biking in British Columbia for this weekend with a few simple taps of your phone.

Though Marohnić started the site with clients in mind, he soon realized the service could be advantageous for guides, too. “I started talking to mountain guides and I learned that it takes on average 10 years before they get enough of a client base to start making a living,” he says. “They can try to build their own client base. Or with us, they get that visibility right away.”

The site takes care of nitty-gritty backend items for guides, like scheduling, invoicing, and even tipping. “I didn’t start guiding because I’m no good at talking on the phone or doing emails,” says Sheldon Kerr, a Colorado-based AMGA and IFMGA certified mountain guide. “The administrative burden is hard, so anything that takes that work off my plate seems like a nice idea.”

But Kerr doesn’t use 57Hours, or any similar marketplace, to advertise her guiding services. She works with a few guiding companies, but mostly, she’s built up her own client base via word of mouth and referrals. “I haven’t seen anyone go to a website like that because they’re looking to spend $700 to spend a day in the mountains with someone they don’t know,” she says. “My experience in booking trips like this is that it’s always linked to a previous relationship with the client.”

Marohnić says they hand-pick the guides listed on the site, ensure that they’re properly credentialed, insured, and permitted, and since users can review their guides, they hope to make the platform a place where people can trust in who they select as their guide.

“We are trying to build a brand that people trust. You can go to Google and find 20 different providers, but you really have no idea,” Marohnić says. “We want to be transparent. This is your guide, you can talk to them, you can ask them questions.”

Besides, he says, it saves a lot of time. “People book with us because it’s convenient,” he says. “They don’t want to spend all day looking for a hiking guide in Iceland. They want to actually go hiking instead.”

These marketplaces often mistakenly get shortened as the Uber for guides. But they’re more than that.

57Hours typically takes a 10 percent commission from the guide, and there’s also a small booking fee on the client’s side. The volume of bookings via the site is on the rise, but it’s not huge—currently, between 500 and 1,000 people a month book a trip using 57Hours, and there are over 500 trips listed on the site. Marohnić says they’ve seen a lot of growth recently with people wanting to travel again after the pandemic.

Alpenglow Expeditions is a California-based guiding company that leads climbing and backcountry ski expeditions all over the world. They have trips listed on 57Hours, though Sean Kristl, general manager for Alpenglow Expeditions, says it’s more of a marketing move than a customer acquisition effort. “We haven’t found any of these booking services or marketplaces to have enough volume to move the needle yet,” he says.

Trips listed on sites like 57Hours can be offered by guide services—businesses like Alpenglow Expeditions that employ a team of certified guides and take on tasks like licensing, permitting, insurance, and customer service—and by independent guides, individuals who operate their own businesses and sometimes work through guiding companies.

“I think these marketplaces often mistakenly get shortened as the Uber for guides. But they’re more than that,” says Utah-based climbing guide Cody Bradford, who began working with 57Hours as a young guide right when the site launched. “When you Google-search for a guide, you have to dive through a lot. In the US especially, there isn’t much information for the consumer and you don’t necessarily know what you’re getting.”

As a guide, Bradford says, whatever cut the website is taking—10 percent or so—still means he’s making more money than when he works for a guiding service, where, he says, he makes 60 percent of the total fee at most.

“Being an individual guide in the US is really hard,” Bradford says. “Sites like these are the first ray of hope that lets an individual guide like me feel like they’re running a real business. Maybe it’s not perfect. I pay a 10 percent fee; the client pays a fee. But as an individual guide, it’s given me that ability to be my own business, even in this country where I’m usually having to work for other companies.”

In May 2021, a 23-year-old recent college grad Carter Brown launched another US-based start-up, called GoGuide, with a similar concept. His idea was to give guides easy-to-use booking software for their own sites and a marketplace for customers to be inspired by a new trip. Their site now has trips with 10 outfitters, mostly fly-fishing outings in US states including Colorado, California, Georgia, Arkansas, Nevada, and North Carolina.

GoGuide currently isn’t charging guides or taking a cut from them. Instead, they take a six percent booking fee from the customer. “We want to make the booking process comfortable and make the customer feel in control, as if they already know the person they’re going to spend their day with,” Brown says. “There’s a high barrier to entry in a lot of these outdoor sports. If you can find someone to help you break in and start fly fishing or backcountry skiing or rock climbing, that’ll help people get over that barrier to entry.”

Orvis-endorsed fishing guide Brian Slusser has been guiding fly-fishing in California’s Truckee-Tahoe area for 25 years—he used to advertise his fishing trips through printed brochures in hotels and print ads in local publications, though many of his clients came via word of mouth. He’s recently started listing his trips on GoGuide and he says he appreciates the convenience of new and returning clients being able to swiftly book online, but he hopes that doesn’t take the place of a personal connection between client and guide.

“I’m old-school, and for me, it’s nice to talk to someone on the phone or through email and get a feel for what kind of fishing they want to do before we go out,” Slusser says. “I still have the opportunity to call or email, but some of that is missing. That’s the way of the world, I guess. There’s technology that helps you and technology that hinders you. So far, it’s helping.”