Tour Guide Training Manual
How would you wish an all expenses paid trip round the globe? Visiting foreign lands, meeting interesting people and exploring new places? Sounds too good to be true? Well, believe it or not, thousands of individuals are quite happily getting paid to try to to this per annum by working as a guide or escort. Guiding is a stimulating job during a growing segment of the travel industry.
This guide is meant to assist you understand what sorts of system are out there and therefore the factors you ought to concede to find the right fit your organization’s needs.
1. Choose your type
Generally speaking, there are two approaches to guiding groups of tourists around an area .
i) The human approach
A real live subject expert takes a gaggle of guests round the exhibit, explaining what they’re seeing and answering any questions they’ll have. There are several benefits to the present approach:
- The tours are interactive because the guide can answer visitor questions on the fly.
- In doing so, the guide also can learn tons about guest interests and expectations, which is extremely valuable from an attraction improvement and planning standpoint.
- A typical guide system will broadcast the guide’s words to headphone sets, which are worn by the guests. This method means ground noise (i.e. like you would possibly experience during a factory tour) is a smaller amount of a problem . a number of these systems also include additional microphones that allow secondary presenters and/or a guest to talk and ask questions which will then be heard by everyone.
- A contrasting benefit is that in quiet spaces like galleries, transmitting the speaker’s words on to the guests’ ears means the guide can talk normally, or maybe in hushed tones. Thus the guide not must amplify the voice to be heard by the entire group, which may frustrate other visitors.
- Some broadcast systems of this sort also include functionality for hearing aid users, ensuring that each visitor hears everything.
On the downside, there are obviously money and time costs related to providing and/or training a knowledgeable human guide, therefore this approach might not suit every attraction.
ii) The automated approach
Each guest listens to a pre-recorded guide, which in most cases the guest is in a position to prevent , start and skip through at their leisure. the advantages of this automated approach are:
- Visitors can customize their experience to a degree (stopping, starting, skipping information etc.).
- a person’s expert doesn’t got to be used or utilized to offer tours.
On the down side, pre-recorded guides involve tons of up-front creation (scripts, approval, translations, recording, editing etc.). Then whenever an exhibit is modified or updated, the guide must be updated too. As a result, the value required to urge a final and ready-to-use guiding system on-site also can be higher via this route than if simply buying a non-automated voice amplification system. Read More
Secondly, if the script doesn’t meet a guest’s needs or they need an issue , within the case of a pre-recorded guide system there’s no guide hand for the guest to quiz.
Like much of the travel industry, competition for jobs is fierce. Candidates will got to have skills and skills that set them aside from the gang . However, with modern travelers now requiring more thorough knowledge about the places they visit and therefore the cultures around them, demand for specialist guides is about to rise. Tour guides with knowledge in ecology, history or architecture are often in high demand also as foreign language and signing skills.
In addition to specialist knowledge, guides got to be ready to entertain the clients and present themselves well. Could you manage a gaggle of travelers and maintain an honest sense of humour in the least times? Ultimately you’ll set the tone of the group and if you’re enthusiastic and positive about the trip then others will take part and celebrate too.
Employment can normally be found by applying to the tour operators directly. you’ll be asked to organize a presentation on your chosen topic for your interview and your presentation style are going to be equally as important as your specialist knowledge. you’ll also gain a certificate in tour guiding through the planet Federation of Tourism Guides Associations. This not-for-profit organisation aims to enhance the standards of guiding within the travel industry.
