Being a Tour Guide is one of those jobs where you are expected to wear many different hats all at the same time. Something looking as easy and simple as a three-hour city tour can require all of the following skills and more:
- Extensive knowledge in history, architecture, politics, science, geology, anthropology, geography and current events
- Public speaking skills, often in multiple languages, which includes fluency with a minimum flavor of local accent
- The ability to control large groups of people accounting for ages, physical abilities, cultures and a variety of attention spans
- The knowledge and insights to answer questions (often the same question multiple times) about topics ranging from the actual tour to the latest untruths being distributed on the internet
- Management of a team of people in support, or sometimes seemingly in non-support, of the tour ranging from the bus/boat/van/transport drivers to the venue ticket-takers, to the sub-guides who may handle a portion of any given tour
- The capability to put a positive spin on those elements beyond the control of the immediate tour team such as the weather, traffic, late cruise ship arrivals, mechanical failures and so on
A Tour Guide’s mastery of all these things will dictate how tour guests will rate the tour when given the paper survey, what they will talk about when they get back to their hotels, cruise ships and home countries and last but not least, what they will leave behind in monetary rewards (¡tips!).
Clearly, Tour Guides are some of the hardest working people in the tourism industry and there are additional factors that make it difficult to deliver excellent tours, every time. Most Tour Guides are private contractors. The expression one often hears is “free-lancer”. A Tour Guide may or may not work primarily for a single tour company and tour operator-provided training varies greatly from company to company. (Kudos to those tour companies who provide continuous training to their Tour Guides.) This means Tour Guides have an obligation to themselves to invest in their personal development if they wish to continue growing professionally.
I crafted this book from years of presentations, writings, readings and personal experiences on tours from all over the world. First I went to the internet just to see if an “Advanced Tour Guide Training Program” already existed. All I could find was a website offering up advice for Tour Guides which more or less read:
- Don’t be late
- Display kindness to your guests
- Always keep a smile
- Keep gift shops to a minimum
That is Tour Guide For Beginners kind of stuff, the basic ABC’s. What we cover in the following chapters are the advanced topics. You won’t find these topics in a textbook or on the internet. These are the topics that come from the “back of the bus”. These are topics that come directly from the guests Tour Guides lead. In my more than 15 years in the tourism industry, I have purposely sat in the back of the bus, boat, and van and asked tour guests what they liked and didn’t like about their tours. In preparation for this book I often phrased my question to those guests as “¿what do you wish the Tour Guide had done to make this tour better?”. This book is a collection of those comments, suggestions and observations – the ones that most often stay at the back of the bus.
The ideas presented in the book are from your guests, from the back of your buses. The next ten chapters are comments they said they wish their Tour Guides would do in some form, shape or fashion. When these things happen guests say: “¡Wow!” When these things happen a tour goes from good to great to excellent. The reward is both guests and guides have an excellent experience, guest give excellent ratings and excellent (or at least better) tips. It truly becomes one of those situations where everyone wins.
Design of the Book
A quick note about the design of the book. I left space at various parts of the book for you to include your own notes and ideas. You’ll see on lists extra bullets left empty to add your own thoughts. I encourage you to read with a pen in hand and add your personal notes as you go through the material. I also invite you to share with me those things you add so we can include them in future versions of the book. Send those creative ideas to: www.Tour-Guide-Central.com and you’ll get credit for sharing your thoughts. I know there are a lot of great ideas out there waiting to join the next edition of this book.
Each chapter ends with a section named: Call to Action. The Call to Action section gives you the challenge of incorporating some aspect of the chapter into your next tour(s). The For the Hungrier Tour Guide section is generally an expanded reading list where you can learn additional information. Being a professional Tour Guide means being a life-long learner and there is a lot of fun and interesting stuff out there. Any of these reading recommendations might be the perfect book to keep in your pocket (in addition to this one) while waiting for that next tour to lead.
¡Here We Go!
So here we go: Coaching for the World’s Best Tour Guides. The strategies are not listed in order of priority so you can read the chapters in any order. If there is a chapter title that jumps out at you, start there. Just make sure and read them all. Read them all, more than once.
¡Happy reading and I hope all your tours are excellent ones and all your ratings and tips are likewise excellent!