The Harvard Student Agencies governing board decided Tuesday to establish a tour service for visitors to Boston beginning May 20.

The service's brochures state that the student-led tours will be personalized alternatives to the mass produced bus tours, with a maximum of 10 people in a group. Tours will last two to three hours, with the destinations depending on the specific interests of the group.

For a test tour, a Spanish-speaking guide spent seven hours showing Boston and Cambridge to a group of Guatemalan runners here for the April 21 Marathon. United Fruit Company, which was sponsoring the runners, paid for the pilot project.

Jonathan M. Mann '69, who arranged the tour service, said he was encouraged by this first success, and hopes to begin distributing the tour service's brochures in hotels, restaurants, hospitals, and universities throughout the country.

The tour service plans primarily walking tours, with taxis being used to cover long distances.

Mann said that unless the group is very small, the cost per person would not be greater than the Grey Line bus tours.