Our Mission: What Hanoi Free Private Tour Guide Is For

Hanoi Free Private Tour Guide is a volunteer club in Hanoi, founded in 2015 and attached to EFIS English. It exists to solve two problems at once. Travellers want a local who can explain the city. Young Vietnamese people need somewhere real to use the English they have spent years studying. One afternoon on the street solves both, and neither side pays the other.

Book your free guide Join our club

Free · tips optional · free cancellation. The club has never charged for a tour.

2015Founded in Hanoi
5,000Members
2,000+Active guides
100,000+Tours led
150,000+Travellers hosted
80+Nations

Sharing knowledge - Getting experience -hanoi free private tour guide

What we promise, and to whom

The club has two sets of members: the travellers who book a guide, and the young Hanoians who volunteer as one. The mission only works if both get what they came for.

To travellers

A guide who has prepared before meeting you, a route built around what you want to see, and nothing to sell. The guide is free, tips are optional and cancellation costs nothing. What you pay is your own entrance tickets and your guide’s, your food, and transport when a stop is too far to walk.

To young Vietnamese

Training before you lead anyone: English from level 0 to level 5, the tour guide course at level 6, an interview, then real tours shadowed with senior members. After that, four to eight hours of unscripted English every time you take a guest out, and the history of your own city learned properly at last.

Conscience and quality, in practice

Two words have been on the wall since 2015. They are easy to print and harder to keep, so this is what they mean on an ordinary afternoon.

Prepare before meeting you

Your guide reads up on the stops you have chosen before the day, and tells you on WhatsApp what they plan to cover. A guide who has not been to a site before goes there first.

Say so when we do not know

Ask something a guide cannot answer and you get “I don’t know, let me find out”, not an invented date. Our members are learning this city too, and they say so.

No commission, from anyone

No shop stops, no restaurant pays us to bring you in, and no partner venue pays the club a share. Where a site charges, you pay the site directly.

Free to change your mind

Cancel at any time, at no cost, and nobody will chase you for it. Tips are optional and nothing about the day changes if you leave none.

What we ask of our guests

Nothing here costs money. It is the short list that makes the exchange work from our side.

An email address and a WhatsApp number that work. Your tour is confirmed only once we have replied, and your guide needs a way to reach you the night before.
Tell your guide what you want. The route is yours. Saying “anything is fine” makes the day harder to plan, not easier.
Cover the entrance tickets, yours and your guide’s, wherever a site charges admission. Your guide is a volunteer, not a staff member with an expense account.
Say so if your plans change. Cancelling costs nothing. Not turning up means a young Hanoian waited for you in the street.
Expect a conversation in English with someone still learning it. That is not a side effect of the free tour. It is the reason the club exists.