Why should you connect with locals while traveling? If you talk to people who have traveled extensively across the globe, you’ll hear some consistent themes. One that I hear often is the opportunity to meet local people that you never would encounter at home.
This gives international travel a destiny-like aspect to it. What are the chances you run into that specific person from that specific country in this specific area today? This is one reason travel is so magical for me. It opens up connections with others that would never have happened if I didn’t get out there and travel.
With that in mind, this post is all about different ways to connect with locals when traveling internationally. Whether it’s homestays, tour guides, or Airbnb hosts, locals provide insight into an area that infinite online research could never. I’ll go into three different ways I’ve connected with locals in my experience traveling internationally.
The Value of Locals while traveling: Homestay Families
I’ll start with the most immersive local experience which is to stay with a local family when you are in-country. This obviously isn’t feasible for all types of trips. But if you want to see what it’s like to live like a local, what better way than to… live with locals! Tactically, I used Homestayweb.com to find my family. This was a leap of faith that might make some uncomfortable just by reading. But, after a few nice emails exchanged with my future host brother, Junior, I felt comfortable with my choice.
This approach is near and dear to my heart since it’s what I did when I studied abroad. My junior year of undergrad, I spent six months studying business in São Paulo, Brazil. I had the choice between student housing where I’d be with other non-Brazilian students, or to independently find an alternative. As a non-drinker and generally anti-social person, I figured the homestay was the way to guarantee at least a private space. Having my own room and no fear of ragers going on in my general vicinity was reason enough to go the homestay route.
Additionally, one of my goals of spending six months overseas was to achieve a conversational level of the Portuguese language. This wasn’t going to happen living with Americans in an apartment. It required a more local experience.
So, staying with a family of locals was the smart choice in this regard as well. Mornings and evenings very limited English speakers was the best (and scariest!) way to make sure that language skill-building happened. By the end I was laughing at soap operas with host-granny, making jokes with host-mom and trading stories with host-brother.
An unplanned benefit of my homestay family was local expertise. True, I may have had more “fun” in the traditional sense living with my fellow exchange students. However, I noticed that groups of those students tended to find a few places they liked and then repeatedly visit those places over and over. My weekends were filled with weekend trips to visit my host family’s friends, or dancing Forro at a nearby dive bar that you wouldn’t have seen without knowing it was there.
“This was a mistake.”
-both of us.
The Local Family Relationship
But even with all of these logical reasons for homestay, the best case I can present for homestaying is that the immersion results in a deep bond with the family. I consider the Dos Anjos family as my second family, even a decade after living in their apartment.
I still check in with my host brother Junior and host mother Ana when I can, even though my Portuguese is back to basically worthless. We share pictures and memories with each other online regularly to enjoy the priceless months we spent together. My bond with them goes far beyond tourists and locals.
In truth, the relationship I built with the Dos Anjos family (Dos Anjoses?) sparked my passion for international travel. This could have been a scary experience for a 20-year-old in South America for the first time. The family made me feel like a part of them, which was an incredible feeling. One of the main reasons I love international travel is the chance to meet people that I can build relationships with to try to recreate even a portion of the feeling that my Brazilian family gave me.
Our relationship was so strong that years later when Brazil was hosting the FIFA World Cup, I knew that if I let my family know I planned on visiting that they would offer up free housing. As expected, once I let my host mother know the plan to attend games, she said we’d stay with them, no questions asked. Easy to connect with locals when you’ve already lived with them before!
These types of relationships are invaluable. This is why I can’t recommend homestaying enough. It doesn’t have to be a months-long experience like mine was. Even couchsurfing or the like is a great, structured way to immerse with a local and get to know the real side of a place. If you want that next level deeper of an experience in a foreign location, this would be a direct way to make it happen.
Tours with a Local
A less intensive way to connect with locals while traveling is to hire a tour guide. This requires a bit of vetting to make sure the guide is a legitimate local. But, if you put in the time investment to get the right person, the dividends can be magical.
A site I used to like to use for day-tours with a local was vayable.com. On this site, you first search for the city you plan on visiting. You then see a number of guides with expertise in a certain topic relevant to that city. For popular tourism cities like Paris, there will be many options ranging from bike tours of the countryside, wine crawls, art critiques, and any other travel niche that you may be into. However, they recently closed their operation.
There are many other sites that do similar P2P experience-finding, so an internet search should lead you to another company that specializes in this matching. Recently, Airbnb started Airbnb experiences, which seems to be pretty similar to Vayable. I haven’t used it yet so can’t recommend it, but know that it’s out there. If you have a positive experience with a different one, be sure to share it with me at Andrew@TheMeticulousTraveler.com!
Admittedly, not all of the guides on these sites are native locals. There are plenty of expats that can hold their own in their current city of residence. But, being native isn’t a guarantee of being an expert guide either. One of the benefits of sites like Vayable is that you can read the biography/background and reviews of the guides. So, trust your instincts and follow your interests and I am confident you’ll find a local guide that fits with your travel style.
A local guide is especially valuable in a country with a majorly different culture than one you’re used to. A couple years ago, I was coming back from a school trip to India and had a 24-hour layover in Doha, Qatar. Having never been to the middle east, there was some natural angst about what I should do with that time. I didn’t know if it was normal or safe to wander around the city. Getting lost in a place where the native language is one I can barely muster “hello” is also best avoided.
To me, Vayable was the perfect fit here. I had an evening to spend in Doha and didn’t want to waste the opportunity to see the city the right way. I got connected with Sakhr, a British expat journalist with intimate knowledge of Doha. He was very approachable and accommodating, as you can see from an excerpt of our emails below (you can tell my #1 priority was eating).
Hi Andrew,
Yes we’ll be eating on the tour. There are a couple of street food places we’ll be stopping at.
As for hotels, there’s not much in between the top end and the super cheap. The very cheap aren’t very nice at all. The top end sometimes have some good discounts though (try the Intercontinental or the Rotana or Melia). Also, I think Qatar Airways was giving one night free or discounted to stopover customers a while ago, I’m not sure if they still do.
A place I like is called K108. It’s close to the souk and all the money goes to charity and it’s cheaper than most high end places. (I ended up staying here on Sakhr’s recommendation.)
There’s only one hotel close to the airport – the Marriott (there are two Marriotts, it’s the Marriott Doha not the Marriott Marquis). Although “close” means 10 mins away and Doha is so tiny that even the city centre is only 15 mins from the airport.
Since we’re meeting in the evening, it won’t make sense to get you to wait at the airport for 6 hours! Let’s meet at the Museum of Islamic Art. That’s a nice place to spend some time and the park is awesome.
See you soon. Best wishes,
Sakhr.
An email like this gave me an instant feeling of relief that I would be taken care of. These emails were weeks before I arrived. Recommending hotels was not part of Sakhr’s job description. However, a person willing to host noobs like me are usually the kind that are quick to offer helpful advice. Also, where else would you get knowledge that specific, other than from a local?
Sakhr and I had an awesome time walking through Doha’s main souk (outdoor market). We ate hand-made pancakes from an old lady throwing dough around like child’s play, drank strong tea at an outdoor shop and discussed Qatar’s rich and often controversial political history.
Looking back, I was so fortunate I was able to connect with Sakhr. I felt that I had really maximized my day in Doha. I saw about as much as I could of the area in such a short time. It really felt like a condensed, one-day homestay so I can’t recommend this route enough for a traveler with a time crunch.
Buy an excursion, then grill the local guide!
My wife Sunshine and I have found a more subtle and interesting benefit to connecting with locals while traveling. We are always on the lookout for the less-touristy, authentic experiences when on vacation. We use conversations with locals to find out what the best opportunities are.
So what’s our approach?
Our first or second day in-country, we will buy a walking tour or basic, cheap tourist excursion. In our experience, these are most often led by native locals who are passionate about their hometown.
We figure if someone is willing to lead tourists around for a living, they’re comfortable sharing a ton of information about what is best to do around town. So, during the touristy experience we will ask the guide questions about what the best restaurants, beaches, activities, etc. there are in the area.
This is a cheap, easy way to get a lot of off-the-beaten-path tourism ideas that you won’t find online.
An example of leveraging a tour guide was when we visited the Galapagos Islands in 2017. Our first day there we visited the tortoise sanctuary (had to, who wouldn’t?) where we had a private guide throughout.
During the lunch towards the end of our half-day tour, we asked our guide about the best islands and companies for snorkeling.
He recommended Pinzon Island, which is one I hadn’t seen in my research leading up to the trip. Beyond the recommendation, he personally knew a guide with a small boat who often went there. He personally set up the intro with this guide.
After a quick conversation, we were all set for our snorkeling adventure the next day. All this just from being polite to our guide and asking a few questions over chicken and rice.
That Pinzon excursion ended up being one of my wife and my favorite days when traveling, EVER. We saw sea turtle families, white-tipped sharks and a family of sea lions that swam right up to our faces.
Click here for a video of our tour group with the sea lions. Sunshine is the one backing away from the sea lions at the 0:40 mark haha, scaredy-cat.. This was a once in a lifetime experience that we could have easily missed out on.
This is why I stress the invaluable benefit that local expertise can add to a trip. If we didn’t make an effort to connect with locals while traveling to the Galapagos Islands, we wouldn’t have made one of our all-time favorite travel memories.
Wrap-Up: Why to connect with locals while traveling
So, why do I think you should connect with locals while traveling? Part of being a savvy traveler is humility. Traveling is a learning experience by nature.
The value of exploring a new place can be multiplied when you have the right person showing you around who knows their stuff. Having a friendly local with you in a new place can be the difference between a life-changing experience and sitting in your hotel room for fear of getting lost or committing a taboo move.
If you connect with locals while traveling, you’ll soon find yourselves having experiences you never would have had with the canned tours. Get out there and chat up the locals!
