Our tours are different by choice. Not because we’re “different people,” not because we’re trying to be cool or alternative. We simply cannot do things in a fake way. We can’t build experiences that are empty, standardized, or designed only to move tourists around the city like numbers. At FollowMi Around there are values that are so deeply part of who we are that we genuinely don’t know how to work differently. Sometimes I even think we are stupid this way, because honestly it would be much easier to do what everybody else does. But we can’t.
Cinque Vie
For example, food tours. Every food tour in Milan goes to Navigli or Brera. Every single one. Easy choice, easy logistics, easy tourism. We don’t. We bring people to Cinque Vie, the area where Milan was originally founded, and today probably the coolest part of the city. You don’t find tourists there. Most of the time you don’t even find Milanese people unless they really know Milan properly. But that’s exactly the point. We want people to see the real soul of the city, not the Instagram version of it.
Family owned restaurants
And we only work with places we truly know. Not random restaurants made for groups. Not places chosen because they are convenient or commercial. We know the owners, we know the people working there, we know their stories, their products, their philosophy. We know exactly what is inside the plate we are serving to our guests. Exactly.
And yes, guests. Not clients. I honestly hate the word clients. People joining our food tours are our guests. Which automatically means they become somehow our friends too. We treat them like equals, like human beings, not customers to process.
Guests, not customers
When we create or test a new experience with the team, I always ask one question: “Would you bring one of your closest friends here if they were visiting Milan from the other side of the world?” If the answer is yes, then maybe that place deserves to be inside the tour. If the answer is no, then absolutely not. Because if a place doesn’t make you feel comfortable, welcome, inspired, at home… then why should we bring our guests there?
Relations first
Every guide at FollowMi Around brings people to places where they personally feel good. That’s why every experience feels alive. Behind food tours like ours there’s an insane amount of work people never see: research, connections, menu tastings, timing, walking routes, relationships, education, storytelling, logistics, passion. Everything is built with intention.
Big tourism companies build tours like multinational products: optimized, structured, scalable, efficient. And often completely soulless.
We chose another way.
Maybe not everybody will like it. That’s fine. Some people prefer faster tours, cheaper tours, standard tours. But many people deeply understand what we are trying to create, because they can feel there are real humans behind it. Humans who care too much about details, emotions, atmosphere and authenticity.
We never wanted to create a tourism factory.
We wanted to create experiences that feel real.
