You can find all our city walking tours here and choose the one you would like to go on depending on the topic, date and guide. The easiest way to book your place is through our website, but if you’re a larger group or organisation you can get in touch to discuss your needs. Each tour comes with its own availability and price. Prices are between £15-£18 per person. All tours require a minimum of two guests to run, so you’ll see if a tour has no bookings yet, the minimum for the first booking is two people.
This can vary from tour to tour, but we prefer to have tours starting with three or more customers. The maximum capacity is usually 20 or 25. Is your group bigger? Don’t panic as we can accommodate any size, if you have more than 25 people we will simply split your group between several guides at no added cost to you.
Most tours are appropriate for all ages – except for Leith: The Trainspotting Generation that comes with an adult content warning because of some of the language used. You can always leave us a note when booking, so we can expect to have young guests on the tour.
The tours delivered by Invisible Cities take you on a unique route, but most of them are wheelchair accessible. We can also adapt our tours to your group and guests, so everyone can enjoy them.
When booking your tour, leave us a note with more details about your requirements, so we can welcome you in the best way ever and plan for any extra needs.
In the past, we have had guests with mobility issues, guests who are visual impaired, and even delivered tours in offices directly, so people can enjoy our stories in the comfort of their working environment.
Our training programme for new prospective guides is also accessible to everyone. It may include off-site visits and trips to other venues which mean we are relying on external circumstances. However, we will always look into alternative solutions when needed.
Lots of our team and guides are also neurodiverse so please be assured that we are a welcoming, relaxed and inclusive organisation where everyone is embraced and welcomed.
Absolutely! Rain or shine, we will go ahead, unless there is a weather warning and we have been advised to stay inside (which has happened in Scotland before!).
If the weather is really bad and your group want to finish early, we sometimes divert into a cafe and carry on chatting over a hot drink.
Our tours tend to be 1.5 to 2 hours long, depending on the group size and how many brilliant questions people ask.
If you want to book a bespoke tour, get in touch and we can talk about your exact requirements including duration, topics, start and end locations.
If the weather is really bad and the group wishes to finish early, the guide will be ready for that and also suggest a way to finish the tour indoors or over a coffee.
It’s confusing, we know!
All tours need two people booked to go ahead.
Our default system is designed in such a way that if no one else is booked on a tour yet, then you can only purchase 2 tickets or more (the option for one single ticket is not available)
But, if other customers are already booked onto a tour, then purchasing one ticket only is visible. This avoids us having single guests booked onto the tour with no one else booking after them and having to cancel or run the tour with one person only.
But SO MANY people say, why are you not accepting single travellers, because it excludes solo travellers and isn’t inclusive. We get it and we want you to know that it’s not ideal, and we absolutely want you to come along! Lots of solo travellers come on our tours.
What we can do –
We can let you know when your tour of choice has bookings.
Or, we can offer you an alternative date/time where others are already booked if you have some flexibility.
Please do contact us for help and we’ll try our best to accommodate.
No sadly not as we plan for the number booked. Our tours only run if we have existing bookings and require advance bookings. This helps us control the schedule and help guides plan for their groups and group sizes. You may see available ‘same day’ dates in our calendar but tours only go ahead with 2 or more bookings so you may turn up and find there isn’t a tour running – and we’d hate for you to be disappointed.
We can be pretty flexible for cancellations provided we have 24 hours notice or ideally more. If so we will always offer to postpone or if more advanced noticed is given, refund the tour.
Occasionally we have to cancel or reschedule a tour which we only do if absolutely necessary – we will give you as much notice as possible and try to arrange a suitable alternative whether that is a different guide, time or date.
If you are a group, business or part of a conference or event, we can absolutely tailor our tours to suit you. Drop us a message and let us know what you need and we will put together a walking tour plan and price for you and your group.
We are really popular with conferences and corporates including Monzo, confused.com, Barclays and Specsavers!
For individual tour bookings you pay on our website via debit card or Google Pay/Apple pay.
We require a payment of at least a deposit for group tours to be received in advance. If you don’t hav final numbers just yet that’s not a problem, just pay for an estimated number that you are comfortable with and we can finalise the plans nearer the time.
Payment method- can we provide an invoice for BACS payment.
Can attendees pay for their own tickets? Yes we can provide a payment link where individuals can book their own ticket.
Please note that if you book for 20 people and only 10 people attend, we cannot refund places as we have planned and catered for that number.
Thank you for this question!
Absolutely, check out our shop, gift vouchers and pay it forward tours. You can also make a donation which helps us to support more guides and expand to more cities.
Got a suggestion? We’d love to hear from you with new ideas too.
In each city we have a number of guides, all of which design and plan their own tours on topics that are particularly important or relevant to them. You can see all of the different tours on our city tour pages and topics range from music to culture, history, social justice and industrial revolution, all with a social impact twist and loads of history about the city.
We regularly do interviews and podcasts about the Invisible Cities model and impact on doing tourism differently, communities and social impact.
If you would like to do a Q&A with us or are researching a subject that we can help you with as part of your studies or for an article, get in touch.
Because we are a social enterprise (not for profit) and all of our income goes towards paying our guides an employed wage and training new guides, we sadly don’t have space in our modest ticket price to add a discount – we know you’ll have an amazing time on a tour and we hope you see the value in investing in us and the experience.
If you are a charity or community group, we will do our best to work to your budget.
This is entirely up to you! Like in every other tourism or hospitality services, gratuities are appreciated, but you are under no obligation to leave some!
The same goes with reviews: we will ask you to leave a review at the end of your tour, but this is entirely your choice.
Absolutely, please do ask the guide questi0ons about their tour and tour topics.
If you wish to ask a more sensitive question please do, and be compassionate if they would rather not discuss something on the tour or in front of a group.
Most of our guides enjoy talking about their journeys, hobbies and interests. They are full of incredible stories and anecdotes.
Occasionally.
When you choose a tour, you’ll see there is a topic such as music, social history, architecture, art or literary stories.
The guides will talk about their own memories of the city in relation to their tour and may touch on some of the more challenging experiences they’ve had in their lives.
However, our guided tours are not about the guide’s life stories. They are not about how the guide came to be homeless or the struggles they’ve overcome to be where they are today – although we always celebrate that progress.
Each of the guides will happily talk about their training, what they enjoy about being a guide, as well as the other work they do, volunteering and the hobbies they enjoy. All alongside delivering the tour they’ve worked hard to research, plan, refine and share with you.
We are sometimes asked if the experience on a tour will be ‘doom and gloom’. Far from it. People come away inspired, energised, lifted up and educated. People always say how much they enjoyed the company, stories and humour of our guides. And that they come away having learnt a lot, with a feeling a sense of purpose, community and new friendships.
We’d love for you to come and see for yourself.
Invisible Cities operates like any other tour operators! Our aim is to welcome as many guests on our award winning tours as possible. The difference with us is we use 100% of our profit to support our trainees and guides further with their development- whether that is doing more training, accessing employment or other opportunities and to raise awareness of the social issues faced by our own cities. We also organise community events, usually to support rough sleepers and other people we do not reach via our training. You can read more about our Social Impact Here.
We operate a Social Franchise Model, which means we are looking for local partners to work with in cities around the world. You can find more information about what that means here. Interested? Fill in our Interest form on our Franchise or email [email protected]
Yes absolutely, we do this a lot for businesses, brands and corporate teams in their city.
Whether you want to come on a tour and learn about your city and what social impact looks like in the community, or you need a guest speaker for your event, we are perfectly placed to deliver an event or team get-together with meaning and purpose.
We can also host events for you such as scavenger hunts or care box packing events.
So whether you’re looking for something different to do for your next corporate CSR team building event or a volunteering team building activity, we operate in Manchester, York, Cardiff, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Scottish Borders and soon, Liverpool, Newport and Leeds.
When it comes to special occasions, festive events and Christmas parties, why not do something with social impact or that can also be a fundraising event? We can host care box packing events for teams – and everyone gets to pack their own box and add a handwritten note for someone in need locally. Or we can host a raffle for you.
Our events are run in a sustainable, ethical way, are eco-friendly and directly benefit the local community through the people we hire, support and work with.
If you have a company or employee giving back scheme or volunteer days, think about Invisible Cities for your next event or get-together.
Goodness: Homeless Tour Guides
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