One of the reasons why our Jack the Ripper Tour has proved so popular over the years is the decision we made in 2005 to limit the numbers to a sensible and manageable number of participants.
To be able to do this we introduced a booking system and, almost immediately, our clients began to see that this was a sensible approach to conducting Jack the Ripper Walks.
Until then the ethos amongst London walks companies was that there was no need to book you could “just turn up.” The problem was that you just didn’t know how many people were going to follow that advice and “just turn up.” This resulted in people finding themselves in the position of turning up to take a Jack the Ripper Tour and finding themselves joining an unsightly cattle drive that might number 80, 100 and, on occasions, even 200 people, all struggling to see and hear just one guide.
We didn’t (and we still don’t) think this is fair on you, our clients. It most certainly wasn’t fair on the people who live in the area who suddenly found their lives blighted by these cattle drive London walks whose guides would stand outside their homes and, either bellow at the top of their voices in order to be heard by their huge groups, or, even worse, resort to using microphones and amplifiers to make themselves audible to their clients.
So in 2005 we launched our “Heard Not Herd” Jack the Ripper Tour, and we’ve kept to that pledge ever since. We began to limit the numbers on our walks to a sensible and manageable size of around 34 people per guide. To do this we introduced a booking system which enabled us to know how many people would be on the tour and which meant we could close bookings for a tour once we had reached our maximum number.
Our clients have often commented on just how pleased they are with this approach. It means that they can interact with the guide and their fellow walkers and, even better, they can actually get into those narrow alleyways that have changed so little since the autumn of 1888 when Jack the Ripper prowled their shadows.