Meet the People You’ll Actually Spend the Day With

Most tour company websites show you tours, prices, and itineraries — and leave out the one thing that actually determines what your day feels like: the person sitting next to you in the car. Here’s who that’s likely to be.

The Local Guides Who Work Alongside Them

Costa Excursions isn’t a two-person operation pretending to be bigger — but it also isn’t a marketplace of anonymous contractors. The local guides who work alongside Peter and Thomas are named specifically and repeatedly in guest reviews, which is a genuinely different signal than a generic “our team” page claiming quality without evidence.

Oliver

Reviews describe Oliver as deeply knowledgeable about Ronda’s history and culture specifically, with one guest noting he found a replacement walking stick for them mid-tour when theirs broke — the kind of small problem-solving that doesn’t show up in a job description but does show up in how a day actually goes. Another review from August 2026 specifically calls out his personal courtesy and driving.

Antonio

Named specifically in reviews of Ronda tours going back several years, including one guest who separately praised both their driver-guide and Antonio as “excellent” and “a great communicator” about the area’s history.

Valme

Described by one guest as “charming and informative” on a custom-designed Ronda tour that specifically skipped the bullring — Valme is one of the guides guests mention feeling like they were travelling with a friend rather than a hired guide.

Juan

A Ronda local specifically, described in one review as “extremely knowledgeable” — the kind of guide whose knowledge of a place comes from actually living there, not from a script.

Karim, Steven, and Dale

All named specifically in reviews of Gibraltar and family tours — Steven mentioned alongside Thomas on a Gibraltar day where “the monkeys were so entertaining,” and Dale specifically praised on a family tour where “the kids loved the day.”

Why This Page Exists

Most of what you’d read on a typical tour company website is interchangeable — any operator can claim “passionate local guides” and “personalized experiences.” What’s harder to fake is a guest naming a specific person, in their own words, months or years after the tour, because something that person did actually mattered to their day.

We’ve built this page from exactly those specific, unprompted mentions — not written copy about our team, but a record of who guests have actually thanked by name.

What “Meeting Your Guide” Actually Means on a Private Tour

On a group coach tour, the guide’s job is largely to deliver the same commentary to whoever happens to be on the bus that day — a role that, by design, doesn’t leave much room for adjusting to any one group specifically. On a private tour, the relationship works differently from the first message you send us: your guide is planning your specific day, not running a fixed script for a rotating audience.

That’s part of why the same names keep showing up across years of reviews, describing genuinely different kinds of days — a family reunion, a solo traveller’s custom hiking request, a professional tour guide’s own group of six, a cruise passenger with a tight schedule. The guide isn’t simply narrating a fixed route; they’re building the day around whoever is actually in the car, which is only possible because the same small group of people has been doing this long enough to know how to read what a group actually wants.

This is also why we can tell you, honestly, that booking with Costa Excursions means booking with people who’ve done this specific work for years, not a platform matching you with whoever happens to be available that day.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who founded Costa Excursions?

Peter Fischer Flórez and Thomas Liedtke, brothers-in-law, who started the business in 2015 and still personally lead tours most weeks. The current legal entity, Costa Excursions S.L., was incorporated in 2025.

Will Peter or Thomas personally guide my tour?

Often, yes — both still lead tours regularly rather than only managing the business. For tours they aren’t personally leading, Oliver will be with you instead.

Are the guides at Costa Excursions independent contractors or employees?

The core team, including the named local guides, works consistently and repeatedly with Costa Excursions rather than being a rotating pool of unrelated freelancers — reflected in the same names appearing across guest reviews spanning several years.