For freelance guides

Tour guide availability calendar: one sheet for every company you guide for

Updated 5 November 2026 by Ravid Efroni, founder of GuidePing, which sends guide offers on WhatsApp. Read the tool comparisons with that in mind.

Short answer

Freelance guides often work for two or more tour companies at once, and each company wants to know your free days. The simplest method that works today is one Google Sheet with a row per day, marked Free or Busy for morning, afternoon and evening, published to the web as a read-only link. You send the same link to every company and update one sheet. Download the free template below. We are also building a free availability link you update by WhatsApp. It is not live yet; you can join the list and we will email you when it is.

How guides share availability today

TripSchool, which trains tour guides, writes that "since guides are often freelancers, they're working for two or more companies at the same time" (TripSchool). Each of those companies needs to know when you are free. What we found:

Companies ask when they hire. A freelance bike tour job in Munich asks applicants for "Your availability for the 2026 season" (job listing).
Guides keep their own calendar. TripSchool tells guides to build a free one in Google Sheets: green for free days, red for booked, "Publish the sheet as a web page", shorten the link and "add this link to your email signature" (TripSchool, 2021).
Some companies use a tool. In TourDash, guides "mark which days and times they're available", but "TourDash accounts are created by the tour operator or manager" (TourDash, For guides). In Bókun, guides are "resource users" the company creates, and they see the departures they are assigned to (Bókun help). Rezdy treats guides as resources the company sets up (Rezdy). Teamup gives each guide a sub-calendar inside one company's calendar (Teamup).

None of these tool pages says how a guide who works for several companies keeps one set of free days across them. Our reading: in each tool your days live in that company's account, so with three companies you enter them three times, or you answer each company by message. A sheet you own and share solves the repeat.

The free method: one sheet for every company

The template has one row per day from 1 November 2026 to 31 December 2027. Morning, Afternoon and Evening each take Free or Busy from a dropdown; Free turns green and Busy red. There is a Note column, and fields for your name and the date you last updated it. A second tab repeats the steps below.

Download the template (.xlsx)Plain .csv

The .xlsx keeps the dropdowns and colours. The .csv has the same rows without formatting.

Set it up in Google Sheets

01Open Google Sheets, then File > Import > Upload, pick the file and choose "Create new spreadsheet". Google Sheets imports .xlsx and .csv (Google help).
02Fill in your name. Mark the days you already know. Leave a cell empty when you do not know yet; empty is more honest than Free.
03Fill in "Updated on" each time you edit, so a company can see how current the sheet is.
04File > Share > Publish to web, choose the tab "Availability", click Publish and copy the link. People with that link see a read-only copy and cannot edit; your later changes are copied to it, which can take a few minutes (Google help).
05Send the same link to every company you guide for, and put it in your email signature and your WhatsApp profile.

What to leave out

Company names and tour names. Every company with the link sees the whole sheet. Free or Busy is enough for them to plan.
Rates and private notes. Keep those in a separate file that you do not publish.
Old months. Hide past rows once a month so the first screen shows the next weeks.

Where the sheet falls short

Problem	Why it happens
Companies still message you to ask	A link in a signature is easy to forget. Nothing tells a company when you change a day.
Updating takes a laptop	Editing a big sheet on a phone is slow, and guides are often on the street.
A stale sheet looks worse than none	If you forget to update it, a company may offer you a day you already gave away.

These are our observations of the method, not measured results.

Coming soon: one free availability link, updated by WhatsApp

We are building a free version of the same idea for guides. It does not exist yet. This page is here to find out whether guides want it before we build it. What it would do:

One link that shows your free and busy days, and nothing else: no company names, no tours.
You update it by sending a WhatsApp message, for example "off 12 to 14 Nov" or "free every Monday in December", instead of editing a sheet.
You send the link to every company you guide for. They open it without an account.
Free for guides. GuidePing is paid by tour companies for guide dispatch, so a company that opens your link will see one line saying the page is made with GuidePing.

For tour companies

If you schedule freelance guides who also work for other companies, asking for their free days once a month is not enough: plans change during the month. GuidePing offers each tour to one guide at a time on WhatsApp and asks the next one when a guide says no or does not answer. More on that: scheduling freelance tour guides without an app and tour guide scheduling software compared.

Questions

How do freelance tour guides share their availability?

Mostly by hand: each company asks, and the guide answers by message or email, or enters days in that company's own tool. TripSchool, a training site for guides, recommends one Google Sheet published to the web, with the link in your email signature. That gives every company the same up-to-date view.

Is there a free tour guide availability calendar template?

Yes. The template on this page has one row per day from November 2026 to December 2027, with Morning, Afternoon and Evening columns that take Free or Busy. It opens in Google Sheets, Excel and LibreOffice. It is free to use and change.

How do I share a Google Sheet without letting companies edit it?

Use File > Share > Publish to web. Google's help says people with the published link see a read-only version without the toolbar and cannot edit. Changes you make to the sheet are copied to the published version, which can take a few minutes.

Should I write which company I work for on which day?

We suggest not. Every company you send the link to can read the whole sheet. Free or Busy is all they need, and it keeps your other work private.

My company uses TourDash, Bókun or Rezdy. Do I still need this?

Those tools hold your availability or your assignments inside that one company's account, set up by the company. If you work for only that company, use its tool. If you work for several, a sheet you own is the one place that shows all your free days.

What is the GuidePing availability link and when is it ready?

A free page that shows only your free and busy days, which you update by sending a WhatsApp message. It is not built yet. Join the list on this page and we will email you once when it is ready.

Run a tour company?

GuidePing offers each tour to your guides on WhatsApp, reads the reply and asks the next guide when one says no or stays silent. Guides install nothing.

Scheduling freelance guides

Sources

Features and prices are what each vendor published on the date read. Check the vendor before you decide.

GetYourGuide commission for suppliers
The 20% to 30% rate, the 2% for twice-monthly payouts, the 25% fee when you cancel, payout dates, VAT and a worked example.
Tour guide scheduling software compared
18 tools side by side: how each asks a guide, whether it asks the next guide on its own, and what it costs.
Assigning guides to Viator bookings
Viator has no guide field: how bookings reach you, its response and cancellation rules, and an order that gets every tour a guide.
Scheduling guides for free walking tours
How tip-based tours earn money, what GuruWalk and FreeTour.com let you do with several guides, and a fair way to give out slots.