What a good schedule should show
A guide schedule is not a list of names per day. To help you make decisions, each service needs a minimum of information visible without opening anything else:
- Start and end time, and the monument entry time if there is one.
- Tour operator and reference, so you know which group it is.
- PAX and language, which decide which guide fits.
- Assigned guide or guides, with their confirmation.
- Status: pending, accepted, modified, cancelled or completed.
- Meeting point, especially if it changes from day to day.
Slots with no guide, the first thing to see
Above all, the schedule is there for one thing: no service should reach the day without a confirmed guide. So the gaps need to stand out, in red or with a different pattern, not hide in an empty cell among a hundred others.
The second risk is overlaps. A guide can run two services on the same day if the times and travel allow it, but you need to see that on the schedule, not find out when they arrive late for the second group. If that has happened to you, review the criteria for tour guide assignment.
The week to plan, the day to run
Each view answers a different question. The week is for planning and sharing out the work. The day is the one for the morning of the service: who is going, at what time and from where. The month gives you the season's workload, and the list is for checking and exporting.
The schedule also has two audiences. The office needs to see the whole team; each guide only needs their own schedule, always up to date. Sending screenshots on WhatsApp with every change is exactly what makes the schedule unreliable, because yesterday's screenshot is no longer valid today.
A schedule in Excel: how to build it and where it falls short
Plenty of agencies start with Excel, and that is fine. One row per service with date, times, tour operator, PAX, language, guide and status, plus filters by date and by guide, already make a usable schedule. You will find it ready to use in our tour guide schedule Excel template, with statuses in a drop-down list and services with no guide in red.
Where it falls short: the spreadsheet does not update itself when the guide confirms, does not tell anyone about a change and, if two people edit it at the same time, you end up with two versions. Every change goes through a copy and paste and a message, and the schedule is only as reliable as the last person who touched it.
The schedule in high season
In April or October, with cruise calls, school trips and tour operators all at once, the schedule stops being something you look things up in and becomes the control room. Three things then make the difference: how fast you spot a gap, how fast the guide hears about a change and how easily you share the work without always loading the same people.
It helps to review it at the same time every day, for example late afternoon for the next day, and not to treat the week as settled while any service is still pending. If your agency runs shore excursions, where many groups arrive at the same time, that daily review makes all the difference.
The schedule in Partners
In Partners, you do not maintain the schedule: it fills itself in. Every request created and every guide assigned appears on the agency's schedule, with month, week, day and list views and one colour per status. Anything without a guide shows up before it is too late.
Each guide logs in to their free area and sees only their services, with the time, meeting point and tickets. When you change something, the service moves to Modified and they get an email: nobody works from an old screenshot.
If you run monuments, museums or walking tours with your own team, see how it fits a guided tour company, or browse the other features.
Updated on October 20, 2026
