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Like A Local Tours Wins Unique Tour Operator of the Year for Brooklyn

Like A Local Tours has won Unique Tour Operator of the Year for Brooklyn in the 2016 Holiday & Tour Specialist Awards!
From Luxury Travel Guide:

“The awards program selects winners based on their achievements and strengths in the travel industry. We received an overwhelming number of superb nominations this year and the judging panel had the unenviable task of selecting those firms, teams and individuals within each category most worthy of an award.

All winners of the 2016 Holiday & Tour Specialist Awards are subject to the same rigorous assessment criteria, carried out by our experienced in-house professionals as well as a number of celebrity guest judges. This ensures that only the most deserving teams, businesses and individuals walk away with one of these prestigious accolades.

Award winners that have demonstrated success and innovation will gain a place in our soon-to-be published award winners’ guide. All of Luxury Travel Guide Award programs represent the pinnacle of achievement, championing the best in their respective fields, therefore to come out as a clear winner is an achievement to be proud of.”

Like A Local Tours is Awarded Trip Advisor Certificate of Excellence for 2016!

LIKE A LOCAL TOURS EARNS 2016 TRIPADVISOR CERTIFICATE OF EXCELLENCE
Brooklyn, NY – May 25, 2016 – Like A Local Tours today announced that it has received a TripAdvisor® Certificate of Excellence. Now in its sixth year, the achievement celebrates hospitality businesses that have earned great traveler reviews on TripAdvisor over the past year. Certificate of Excellence recipients include accommodations, eateries and attractions located all over the world that have continually delivered a quality customer experience.

“We could not be more thrilled to receive this award. We have received it every year that we have been in operation. We value our customers and work hard to make sure we exceed their expectations. It’s nice to be recognized for this hard work by our customers and TripAdvisor,” said Lauren Beebe, Founder of Like A Local Tours.

“With the Certificate of Excellence, TripAdvisor honors hospitality businesses that have consistently received strong praise and ratings from travelers,” said Heather Leisman, Vice President of Industry Marketing, TripAdvisor. “This recognition helps travelers identify and book properties that regularly deliver great service. TripAdvisor is proud to play this integral role in helping travelers feel more confident in their booking decisions.”

The Certificate of Excellence accounts for the quality, quantity and recency of reviews submitted by travelers on TripAdvisor over a 12-month period. To qualify, a business must maintain an overall TripAdvisor bubble rating of at least four out of five, have a minimum number of reviews and must have been listed on TripAdvisor for at least 12 months.

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About Like A Local Tours

Founded in 2013, Like A Local Tours offers insider NYC and Brooklyn Food, Wine and Artist Studio Tours made for tourists and locals alike. Like A Local Tours has received the Tripadvisor Certificate of Excellence every year and is recommended by Fodor’s, Vogue Australia, The Daily Telegraph, HollywoodLife and many more. In 2015, Like A Local Tours was rated top 10 Tours & Attractions in NYC’ by NYC & Co and top 5 NYC Food Tours by Sherman’s Travel. Specializing in stylish and buzz-worthy tours, from epicurean adventures to VIP experiences. Like A Local Tours works with the travel trade, corporate events, individuals, groups and conducts public, private and custom tours. Join them for an intimate Brooklyn Tour or NYC Tour today!

About TripAdvisor

TripAdvisor^® is the world’s largest travel site**, enabling travelers to plan and book the perfect trip. TripAdvisor offers advice from millions of travelers and a wide variety of travel choices and planning features with seamless links to booking tools that check hundreds of websites to find the best hotel prices. TripAdvisor branded sites make up the largest travel community in the world, reaching 340 million unique monthly visitors***, and 350 million reviews and opinions covering 6.5 million accommodations, restaurants and attractions. The sites operate in 48 markets worldwide.

Like A Local Tours Nominated for 2016 Holiday & Tour Specialist Awards by Luxury Travel Guide

The Luxury Travel Guide are pleased to announce Like A Local Tours has been nominated as a potential winner in the 2016 Holiday & Tour Specialist Awards. Over the past 12 months we have been receiving votes for individuals & companies throughout the Americas, with our subscribers, hotel guests, travel agencies and industry experts all voting on who they feel is most deserving. Celebrating & rewarding excellence in many areas, these awards recognise companies regardless of size or location across categories including:

Service Excellence
Local Knowledge
Online Visibility
Use of Technology
Marketing & Branding
Employee Satisfaction
Cultural Understanding
Diversity
Communication Skills
Disability Provisions

Stay tuned to find out if we win! If you are a member, please vote for us!

Like A Local Tours has been selected for the 2016 Best of Brooklyn Awards for Tours!

The Brooklyn Award Program is an annual awards program honoring the achievements and accomplishments of local businesses throughout the Brooklyn area. Recognition is given to those companies that have shown the ability to use their best practices and implemented programs to generate competitive advantages and long-term value.
Each year, the Brooklyn Award Program identifies companies that we believe have achieved exceptional marketing success in their local community and business category. These are local companies that enhance the positive image of small business through service to their customers and our community. These exceptional companies help make the Brooklyn area a great place to live, work and play.

The Brooklyn Award Program was established to recognize the best of local businesses in our community. Our organization works exclusively with local business owners, trade groups, professional associations and other business advertising and marketing groups. Our mission is to recognize the small business community’s contributions to the U.S. economy.

Like A Local Tours Featured in “A Professional Drinkers Guide to NYC”

April 18, 2016: Looking for the best bars in NYC? Though we like to consider ourselves seasoned barflies, it’s always best to defer to the professionals. So we asked cocktail experts about their favorite spots to catch a buzz in NYC. Here is the first installment of their favorite bars, breweries, and speakeasies in the city.
Click here for the full article! NYC Cocktails

Like A Local Tours Praised by Part Time Trophy Wife Blog

Day 3 Highlights: On day 2, we booked a last minute tour with Eat Like a Local for their Boozy Sunday tour of Williamsburg in Brooklyn. First thing though, we headed out to the Empire State Building, where there was a surprisingly minimal line up for Sunday at 10AM. The trip to the 86th floor was $32pp – moderately worth it. If I could have a do-over, I’d trade this for the NBC studio tour and trip to the top of the Rockefeller. From here we walked (yes, walked), south and across the Williamsburg bridge into Brooklyn for a 3.5 hour food and art tour ($55pp), which was well worth it! Stops ranged from beer and bbq to wine and ice-cream, topped off with a visit to a local flea market. I would definitely recommend this – especially the 1001 beer at the Brooklyn Brewery. Stuffed and satisfied, we took the subway (first time!) back into the city.

A Weekend in the Big Apple

NYC | The Art Scene Grows in Brooklyn

Posted on April 10, 2016 by 10milesbehindme: Brooklyn is where it’s at. A tree grows there. Beards grow there. But most importantly, the art scene grows there. Last weekend, I ventured out to Bushwick, a cool “up-and-coming” neighborhood in Brooklyn. I say “ventured,” but it was a much quicker ride than I expected – taking the L train to Jefferson Street took about 20 minutes from Union Square. I don’t love the phrase “up-and-coming,” but it does apply to Bushwick. You’re probably familiar with Williamsburg, Brooklyn, birthplace of the hipster – well, Bushwick is being called “the next Williamsburg.” It has changed so much over the last few years and is expected to look even more different over the next few. I hope it doesn’t change *too* much, because I fell in love with what I found there last weekend.

I was in Bushwick to take a Brooklyn Art Tour with Like a Local Tours. In addition to art tours in Bushwick AND Park Slope/Gowanus, Like a Local Tours also offers food and booze tours of Williamsburg, tours of the Flatiron district, and tours of North Fork wineries on Long Island.

We started off our tour with Lauren, the founder of Like a Local tours, outside of AP Cafe where I grabbed a chai to comfort me on that gloomy day. Like a Local tour groups are traditionally small (around 15 max), but our group was even tinier, which I’m sure was due to the weather.

I’ve been on a lot of tours in my day but I’d never been on one that seemed like I was just walking around with a group of friends until last weekend. It was more of a conversation than a tour. Lauren took us around to the popular outdoor gallery of street art, the Bushwick Collective, which reminded me of my visit to 5 Pointz, which I explored just two days before it was surprise white-washed. There are blocks and blocks of buildings covered in a diverse array of street art. I loved the bright colors against the bleak sky we had that day.

Lauren told us about the history of the Bushwick Collective, how it got started, and got into details about specific artists (which you’ll have to experience when you go on the tour yourself). The art work will freshen up every once in a while, as the artists are contracted for a specific amount of time, but the most popular artists’ work will stay longer. So get out there soon and get out there often.

10milesbehindme_bushwick_art9

After walking around outdoors for a while, we entered Brooklyn Brush Studios where we were given access to three artists’ studios AND the artists themselves – a true treat.

Luis Martin, @ArtEngineer, took us around the studio and showed us his collages, many made of pictures from magazines + paint.

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Samantha Robinson, @samantha___robinson, walked us through her process, which includes constructing wooden frames into different shapes and painting silk fabric to stretch over the frames.

We talked with Annesta Le, @annesta_le, who forms her artwork with straight tubes of neon and bends them over fire with her unprotected-from-the-heat hands.

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After seeing their artwork and asking them questions in their studios, the tour concluded with a “mixer” with the artists where we drank wine and had some snacks, along with some more conversation with the artists and Lauren.

Would I recommend this tour? One word, as represented on the side of this building:

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Many thanks, Like a Local Tours and Young Travel Professionals for hosting me on this tour and to my dear friend The World Wanderer for letting me know about it!

NY Travel Fest: LIKE A LOCAL TOURS HAS A NEW ART TOUR!

April 1, 2016: Like A Local Tours is proud to present an insider look at the art world. Participants will meet and learn from working Brooklyn artists in their studio. The tour is interactive and experiential and mediums involved include paint, neon, sculpture and more. Two tour options present an opportunity to experience Brooklyn’s most exciting art destinations, Park Slope/Gowanus and Bushwick – which some say is reminiscent of the art scene in Soho in the 70s but is quickly disappearing.

Lauren Beebe, Founder of Like A Local Tours says, “The goal of this tour is not only to open the door to an experience not available to most people, but also to educate, inspire and pull back the curtain on some of the art world, so to speak. Most people are unfamiliar with the emerging art world. There is truly fantastic yet affordable art out there. Myself, and the organizations we have partnered with, want to provide a unique and comfortable environment to turn people on to emerging artists as well as show their work. Maybe we will even help someone start an art collection!”

When asked about the tour, Krista Saunders Scenna, Co-director of Ground Floor Gallery shared her excitement in teaming up. “By far, the most rewarding aspect of my job as a gallerist is the relationship I nurture with the talented, emerging artists in my network. Second to that, is the opportunity to introduce a new art buyer to one of these up-and-coming talents in the intimate, creative space of the studio. Where else can you witness the artist’s creative process, firsthand, and get to know them in such a relaxed atmosphere?”

The tour begins with a welcome drink and a curator led talk about the current exhibition. Then the group visits the studios of two artists. “Each artist studio is its own universe with its own gravity. It is very much the artist’s stage where they perform,” says Luis Martin, Director of Programming and Chief Curator, Brooklyn Brush Studios.

A large portion of tour proceeds go to the artists and art organizations. Tour highlights include a complimentary piece of artwork from one of the artists on the tour and swag bag with art related goodies and information on how to start an art collection.

The art organizations involved include Ground Floor Gallery, Brooklyn Art Space, Parenthesis Art Space and Brooklyn Brush Studios. For those interested in embarking and experiencing the Brooklyn Artist Studio Tour with Like A Local Tours, you can book your adventure today at www.likealocaltours.com/brooklyn-art-tour.

Top five ways to get the best out of New York in 2016

March 12, 2016: BOREDOM is not an option in the city that never sleeps. New York City continually reinvents itself, presenting visitors with thrilling new experiences. Here’s our guide to the best of 2016 in the new New York City.

Go behind the scenes with a studio tour of working Brooklyn artists’ spaces. Like A Local Tours (likealocaltours.com) offers participants a choice from two of the borough’s most exciting art destinations – Park Slope/Gowanus and Bushwick.

Take a Brooklyn art tour and see the street art of Bushwick. Picture: Alamy

Click here for the full article.

All the Single Ladies: New York for Solo Women Travelers by CityGuide

March 8, 2016:

NYC for Solo Women: Recommended New York Tours

Like A Local Tours

Williamsburg Bites explores local fare, including Mast Brothers Chocolate.

Looking to do some sightseeing, but don’t want to feel like a tourist? Like A Local Tours offers a variety of Manhattan and Brooklyn tours give the insider slant on everything from the Flatiron District to Williamsburg to food and beer tastings. For film buffs, On Location Tours covers NYC’s favorite TV and film sites, including tours dedicated to TCM Classic Movies, Central Park, and Sex and the City.

NYC for Solo Women: Public Art

Eleanor Roosevelt statue at Riverside Park

Eleanor Roosevelt at Riverside Park/flickr/Eden, Janine & Jim

Honor your foremothers at the (relatively few) statues of prominent women salted around New York. Sunk in thought, an eight-foot high statue of Eleanor Roosevelt is in Riverside Park at West 72 Street. A bronze bust of Gertrude Stein is in Bryant Park, behind the New York Public Library. Abolitionist Harriet Tubman meets your gaze where St. Nicholas Avenue and West 122 Street meet. All locations are in Manhattan.

NYC for Solo Women: Cocktails

King Cole Bar

King Cole Bar/Facebook

Have a drink (alcoholic or not) at one of the city’s glamorous bars, like the King Cole Bar at the St. Regis Hotel. This iconic bar has spelled sophistication since it opened in 1932. Gaze at the Maxwell Parish mural of the King himself while sipping an old-world cocktail like a Manhattan and pretend that Marilyn Monroe just walked in. For maximum fun, dress up a little.

Click here for the full article.