Frequently Asked Questions

BEWARE of scammers using Tours Around Michigan legitimate business information to get personal information. Do NOT share personal information with anyone claiming to be Tours Around Michigan without confirming it with us by call/text 616-970-4825 or emailing info@ToursAroundMichigan.com (create a new email or forward job offer email – don’t reply to it).

Actual job offers from Tours Around Michigan include phone calls and in-person meetings. If you do not talk directly with our founder Candice Smith, who lives in the Grand Rapids, MI area, then it is not connected to our company in any way.

There ARE scammers using Tours Around Michigan real company information, including our legitimate email address, phone number that goes directly to founder Candice Smith, links to our legitimate accounts, and actual street address.

Scammers pretend to be Tours Around Michigan through postings on job sites like Handshake, Indeed, LinkedIn, Jobted, Grabjobs, and others, and through emails sent directly to a person. The scammer offers high pay for a fake job. So far, fake jobs offers include customer service, customer support, and data entry. Scammers use Tours Around Michigan’s information to trick job seekers into contacting them through something other than our legitimate email or phone number. Scammers often ask to contact them through an app like Signal or WhatsApp. Scammers use the name of our real staff, plus fake name “Frank Maloney” who does not exist.

If you see a suspicious job posting or receive an email, please verify by calling/texting 616-970-4825 or email info@toursaroundmichigan.com (forward their email, don’t reply to it). If you confirm it is not from Tours Around Michigan, please report the scammer on the app they asked to communicate with you and also on any job posting sites. (We don’t know if reporting the email will report us as a company or the scammers, so not sure on reporting the email.) Thank you!

If you’d like to consider working with the REAL Tours Around Michigan, please check out our Work With Us page on our website.

WATCH news story “Name of Grand Rapids area business being used in scam”

Currently, all our public tours are walking only. If you have an accessibility concern that limits walking, please reach out to us. We have a transport wheelchair for guests to use, and can sometimes shorten walking distances on many tours, while still receiving the same number of stories. If you’d like a private tour, we can ride in your vehicle as a guide, or rent a vehicle to accommodate the size of your group.

We run tours in all seasons, which are fun in about any weather (winter snow can make the city look even more magical). Dress appropriately. In winter, wear more layers than you think you’ll need, as the wind can really blow in some areas. This is especially true for teenagers, who tend to underdress and get cold.

If you’re concerned about weather, you are welcome to reschedule your tour for a future date. Unsafe weather, which can include lightning or extreme ice conditions during the time of the tour, will likely result in cancellation. At that point, you can reschedule or cancel & receive a refund. We’ve found we are very lucky that storms often clear when we’re about to start a tour, so we watch weather closely.

Our walking tours may briefly step into buildings to offer more depth to the information. These are privately owned buildings. Out of respect for owners, we often cannot go inside, but we do visit inside buildings whenever possible. For our Historic Home Tour, we work hard to develop trusting relationships with homeowners over years. For these tours, we often step into one home, but there are times when circumstances do not allow us to go inside during tour time. Please let us know if you have any mobility concerns that may limit your ability to climb stairs, which some buildings may require to enter.

Tours Around Michigan works hard to be accessible to help everyone relax & enjoy their experience. Our walking tours are designed or easily adaptable for wheels, whether a wheelchair, scooter or stroller. We are proud to be an emerging leader in accessible tourism. We were the first U.S. tour company to be endorsed by Europe’s Accessible Travel Online., which named us 2024 Accessible Favorite worldwide. We are also the first service company to partner with AbleVu. We want all our tours to be accessible and enjoyable for all needs. For example, we had a lot of fun with our City Tour/ArtPrize Tour with a group of neurodivergent adults! Their tour was more tactile and visual, instead of information heavy. This customized the tour to how they would best enjoy it. They had a blast! Please contact us with any questions or special needs for you or your group!

Researching new stories to share is a lot of fun for us! By request, we’ve given tours on urban renewal, urban planning, military & government history, Asian history, how Grand Rapids bounced back economically, and many others. We like a challenge! Please contact us with your ideas or questions about unique topics.

No. We are NOT partnered, affiliated with, or associated in any way with a U.S. company that also runs a tour titled “Grand Rapids Ghost Tour,” which has no known connections to Michigan except for hiring tour guides. Tours Around Michigan is proud to have deep, meaningful business and personal connections in Michigan. The family of our founder has been in Michigan since the 1840s. We are locally owned and operated from Grand Rapids, Michigan.

We continually research new stories and do not have one stale script mandated for our guides to regurgitate. From what we’ve seen on U.S. company’s website, its Grand Rapids Ghost Tour, includes inaccurate information of local hauntings and photos that don’t appear to be Grand Rapids or Michigan locations. Their Grand Rapids hired guides informed us that the U.S. company mandatory script includes stories directly from Tours Around Michigan’s Grand Rapids Ghost Tour, including our personal haunting encounters that happened on Tours Around Michigan experiences, like our own exclusive spirit guide #AmosTheGhost . This national company even copied our obscure starting spot using an address we made up for people to find our meeting location. After seeing how this U.S. tour company plagiarized Tours Around Michigan’s Grand Rapids Ghost Tour, its own tour guides directly endorsed Tours Around Michigan Grand Rapids Ghost Tour on social media and verbally as the best ghost tour experience to book instead.

We have consulted an intellectual property attorney who confirmed we have proof that some stories the U.S. company uses are Tours Around Michigan intellectual property. However, the expense of enforcing our intellectual property to get the national company to stop using, is financially out of reach for a small business like us. It’s how they operate to keep stealing from local small businesses. They also have a reputation for taking legal actions against individuals and small businesses, which means they put their much larger size behind hurting locally owned entrepreneurs. This is also why we are not directly sharing the U.S. company’s name. This national company operates in dozens of cities, so we are not the only ones whose years of hard work has been plagiarized.

Tours Around Michigan receives phone calls and emails from confused tour ticket buyers (they use groupon a lot), job candidates and other people who cannot get a hold of someone at the national company when they need customer service. We are NOT affiliated with this national company or their operators in any way. If you have any questions about a refund, miscommunication, confusion or misinformation from this national company, please reach out to it directly through whichever means they previously communicated with you. Also, please feel free to share any unprofessional experience with this U.S. company via an online review and reporting to the Better Business Bureau (BBB). Help protect other consumers from bad experiences and support locally owned businesses.

If you’d like a tour experience with people who have roots in West Michigan back to the 1840s, please take a look at our public tours  and private tours to see what you’d like to enjoy first! We are committed to giving everyone the best experience possible filled with fun memories.

Yes, please! We LOVE to create new customized experiences that are just right for your private tour group! Want a ghost tour with cocktail tastings in haunted places, or a mural tour with wine tastings stops? And, of course, EVERYTHING goes with beer.  We’d love to make your group feel extra special by creating something new just for you.

For public tours, children under age 5 are free to join. Children ages 6 & older are the standard ticket price (and in our experience have just as much fun)! If you’d like your minor child to join a tour that involves alcohol tastings, we can offer non-alcoholic drinks for them at a lower ticket cost, contact us for more information. And, as always, if you have any questions, please ask. We are happy to discuss your unique circumstances.

We can arrange for you to go into a historic home during a private tour or Step-On-Guide tour. Options include an 1860s Victorian, the most authentic work of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and other options, depending on the size of the group. Arrangements to visit must be made ahead of time, so please let us know if that interests you.

For our public Historic Home Tour, we work hard to develop trusting relationships with homeowners over years. For these tours, we often step into one home, but there are times when circumstances do not allow us to go inside during tour time. Please let us know if you have any mobility concerns that may limit your ability to climb stairs, which some buildings may require enter.

Our ghost tours are fun, and guests as young as 6-years-old enjoy them. But, they can be a little spooky, so let us know if you’d like us to avoid using our scariest stories. They are still great stories without the gore. And of course, if you’re looking for the scariest experience, let us know. We always have more details to share.

If you want a really unique experience, join our Grand Rapids Ghost Hunt Tour where we bring the paranormal instruments and you learn to use them. Let’s see what we capture together!

While it’s often unheard of to have a spirit encounter on a ghost tour, our tour guests regularly see, hear or feel something. Since many of us are taught as kids not to follow our gut instincts, we’ve learned to block or ignore experiences like ghosts. We encourage everyone on the tour to be emotionally open to experience something and to tell us if they think something happened. We even have #AmosTheGhost our exclusive haunting guide who has walked with our tours for years. Amos likes hearing us talk about him, so #AmosTheGhost often playfully interacts with tour guests open to encountering him. (It doesn’t hurt to tell Amos out loud that you want him to interact with you.) We’ve even recorded Amos’ voice! Over years of tours, we’ve guests often share multiple subtle experiences happening in the same places. For example, we have a spirit woman who likes to place her hand on people’s side or play with their coat pocket. People have also heard her speak, including responding to something our tour guide just said.  Haunting activity is always a possibility!

Pets are welcome on our walking tours. Your pet must be controlled with a leash or carried, able to stay quiet during the tour and comfortable around chaotic downtown activity, including horses. Please also distance from others on the tour. Please let us know if you’d like your pet to come so we can plan and let other guests know to expect a pup.

We follow current guidelines and requirements for health and safety. We can run many of our tours with some adjustments. Luckily, outdoor walking tours have a lot more flexibility in continuing to operate when indoor businesses have limitations. For craft beverage and food options, we find safe venues operating at the time of the tour. If you have more questions, please Contact Us