Information About Our Rates
On quality service, taxes and other factors.
FIRST CLASS SERVICE AT A FAIR COST
We are not interested in comparing with other companies nor in competing in price but in quality.
We go above and beyond to deliver an excellent service to our customers, and we invest a lot of time, resources and money to achieve it. That, of course, reflects in our fees. We do not offer discounts or lower our fees, because we don’t wish to offer you less than you deserve: an excellent tour of Barcelona.
We specialize in private tours
Our guides are the best... and we pay them what they deserve!
In Spain, only official tourguides are entitled to take visitors inside the sites and explain. And in our tours, we want you to be able to enter any site you wish to visit and get professional explanations there – not just see it from outside against your will. As a plus, official tourguides can skip lines to enter sites, so no time is wasted waiting to go in.
A cheaper non-licensed tourguide will only be able to explain sites from outside (some dare entering sites where they shouldn’t be giving explanations knowing that’s illegal to do it, but they get expelled from the site when they are caught, and that can definitely ruin a tour). A non-licensed guide can’t skip lines… because they are not supposed to take you inside the sites!
We also believe that well paid guides mean happy guides, happy guides are motivated guides, and motivated guides give the best tours. This is why we are more than happy to pay them way better than what’s standard in the local market. And knowing at the end of the tour you’ll have developed something close to a friendship with your guide, you’ll also be happy to know that we are not cheap with your guide and that are getting well paid. Around 60% of our fees (in a walking tour) goes to your guide.
We use dedicated drivers in our chauffeured tours
In our tours, drivers drive and guides talk: you don’t get one person doing both jobs at the same time. And here is why:
In Spain, a driver must have a special professional license and a SP plate (standing for Public Service), and most official tour guides don’t have that. Often English-speaking drivers will offer city tours, but then they won’t be able to take you inside any site and even less help you skipping lines: that’s the guide’s job.
We only use professional drivers with all the required licenses and plates. Plus the drivers company we use only works with Mercedes cars and minivans that they renovate often, all of them air-conditioned, with leather seats and all kind of comfort and luxury details. If you are willing to pay for a private driver, we believe you don’t deserve anything less than the very best.
Learn more about the other downsides of having a driver giving explanations (such us safety, time-efficiency…)
Award-winning
Business decisions
All our fees include 21% VAT
Taxes in Spain are high, and tour fees must include by law a 21% VAT. While working under the table and not paying taxes can evidently help to keep rates low, we chose to work legally because we believe taxes contribute to the welfare and progress of the local community.
Business costs and profit
Marta, the owner of the company, started the business on her own: she gave the tours, she designed the website, she took care of the accounting, she wouldn’t go to sleep until after midnight answering emails… But when your business grows you can’t keep up with all this without starting to make mistakes sooner or later, and then the level of quality is affected.
This is how the team started growing (you can learn more about the ForeverBarcelona staff here), and having a team means… paying salaries, of course! And improving our systems often requires more complex tools that aren’t free anymore. Cutting on company costs would result in a slower response and a mediocre service. We do consider carefully any new expense we add to our costs, but when we hire new staff or register for a new service, we do it because we know it’ll just take ForeverBarcelona closer to perfection.
In the other hand, we are also a business and therefore are here to make some profit out of the services we provide. We are inspired by the book Profit First by Mike Michalowicz to keep a sustainable balance between our company expenses and our profit. As we’ve already mentioned, roughly 60% of a walking tour fee goes to the guide, 21% is taxes, and the other 19% is divided between other company expenses and profit.
AND MOST IMPORTANT: Our guests agree it's well worth it!
Hundreds of testimonials back up the quality of our services
