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Community and Events, Europe, Travel Videos

Event Recap – Berlin meets CzechTourism & Honest Guide

On October 30, Travel Massive Berlin met at the stunning Czech Embassy to learn more about the power of video and community.

This event was sponsored by CzechTourism and featured special guests Janek Rubes and Honza Mikulka of Honest Guide.

Lydia Band and Lisa Hübner, co-leaders of Travel Massive Berlin wrote this event recap. Lydia is the Community Manager and Event Coordinator at Berlin Travel Festival while Lisa works as a travel marketing & PR specialist. Both are also on Travel Massive’s build team.

After enjoying some traditional Czech snacks and drinks in the grand foyer, Marketa Chaloupkova, Director of CzechTourism in Germany opened the program and introduced the audience to the remarkable location as well as the topic of the evening.

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Then, Janek and Honza took over and gave the audience an overview of their videos and the reason behind creating Honest Guide in 2016 — to introduce travelers to “their” Prague and protect them from walking into one of the city’s tourist traps.

Via their video content and on their social media channels, Janek and Honza warn their community about tourist traps and instead offer suggestions for off-the-beaten-path experiences. As the name implies, the idea of their weekly videos is to be honest — for example, they show places to avoid like Prague’s Charles Bridge or the famous castle, which are suffering from overtourism. Instead, their fans are shown how they live their lives as Prague natives and locals.

Avoiding Tourists Traps in Prague

As for their motivation, their fans are always the engine to continue. With the power of their community, they were even able to shut down a currency exchange place that had been scamming tourists for 28 year.  Janek & Honza developed the term #scamfie – which is a selfie with a scammer. A lot of fans followed this idea and shared their scamfies of the store on their channels. In the end, Honest Guide and their fans had the power to protect future travelers from getting scammed.

Other tourist traps the audience learned about were for example overpriced taxis (sometimes even up to 5 times higher than normal price!) or restaurants and shops pretending to sell traditional food and other products.

Finding Local Experiences

Besides fighting tourist scams, they want their followers to have a more authentic experience in their hometown and share real local tips you can’t find in any guidebook. When it comes to lunch options, for example, they introduced the traditional open faced Czech sandwich, which is cheap and easy to get, instead of overpriced Hungarian goulash in a bread.

To really eat like a local, Janek found out that the canteen of his elementary school was open to public, so Honest Guide didn’t want their followers to miss out on this unique experience. And quite a few of their followers even went and took pictures of themselves having lunch at the school canteen – which they admitted was not particularly good but certainly authentic.

In order to avoid making the most special of their local discoveries into new overcrowded tourist traps, they sometimes decide not to publish the address and location of the venue, so places don’t get overrun too fast – but some fans manage to find them anyway.

Another example of a real local and authentic experience are the “Eastern European Elevators of Death” – also known as paternoster. Janek & Honza sent their followers to Prague city hall to try out these oldfashioned elevators, which are running constantly and you have to jump in, in order to reach the next floor. So many tourists came and tried it that the elevator broke eventually and signs were put up where else to find them. In the end it was healthy for the city hall employees, who had to take the stairs now.

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Our members learned that Prague being Honest Guide’s home town, they feel responsible to take care of the people visiting it. Therefore, they aim to shut bad places down one by one. The government does not always support this, as they don’t want potential visitors to see the “bad” side of the destination. Janek and Honza think differently, and just want to stop bad guys from ruining the city. And more importantly, from messages they receive and their fans’ post on social media, they get proof that many travelers specifically come because they saw the Honest Guide videos. So in the end, they are not driving tourists away, but attracting them to the city with their honest and quirky coverage.

In the end, Janek and Honza don’t see themselves as Youtubers, as they were never hunting for views. They want to be genuine and show their opinion. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why they became so popular and are currently recording 2.5 million monthly views and 241k subscribers to their Youtube Channel.

They’re also exploring other cities in and around Czech Republic, but their heart will always be in Prague. To be authentic in other cities as well, they are trying out recommendations by friends that are from those places.

Prizes and Treats

After the presentation some of our members were lucky enough to win amazing prizes:

Nicole Cogiel from visitBerlin won a bag full of goodies from CzechTourism. Two other attendees were the lucky winners of a gift basket from Sponsor Alt-Böhmische Bäckerei and a train ride to Prague with Deutsche Bahn.

Afterwards guests could enjoy Czech beer and treats and network in the beautiful Foyer of the embassy.

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Thank you all for coming – we hope to see you again next time!

And make sure to check out Honest Guide’s videos before planning your trip to Prague, or another destination they explored, to get the most out of your journey.


Join Berlin Travel Massive to connect with the community and register for future events!


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