About favela-tours.com

favela-tours.com is an independent overview of guided favela tours in Rio de Janeiro, with a focus on tours led by people from the community. This page explains who runs it, how it is paid for and how the tours are chosen.

Who is behind this site

The site is run by Patrick Kühne, an independent travel publisher based in Markkleeberg near Leipzig, Germany, who maintains a small group of guides to tours and tickets. One person researches the pages, writes them and answers the mail.

How the tours are chosen

Only walking tours and hikes are listed. Jeep tours, party and baile funk tours and drone add-ons are left out on purpose. For each tour we note what its listing says about the guide, the meeting point, the mototaxi and any community project. A tour is marked as resident-led only when its own listing says so; reviews alone are not enough.

How the site is paid for

If you book through a link on this site, GetYourGuide or Viator pays a commission out of its share of the booking. Your price is the same. No operator pays to be listed, and the tables are sorted by number of reviews.

Where the information comes from

Prices, ratings and review counts update automatically from the booking platforms. Everything else comes from the tour listings and was checked in October 2026. The travel advice is quoted from the German Federal Foreign Office, the US State Department and the UK Foreign Office, with links to the current versions.

What this site is not

We do not run tours and we are not connected to any operator listed here. We cannot judge the security situation in a favela on a given day, and we do not tell anyone that a visit is safe. The official advice and your own judgement decide; for anything binding about a booking, the operator’s information applies.

Contact

Corrections and questions reach the same person who writes the pages. The e-mail address, postal address and VAT ID are in the legal notice.