TOUR GUIDE
Description
Tour guides are sometimes called tour managers or tour escorts. They may meet their group at the airport or travel with them to their destination. They help everyone in the group get their luggage or go through customs. The tour guide then travels with the group, making sure the group gets where it's supposed to be—on time and in one piece.
Tour guides are on duty twenty-four hours a day seven days a week when they're on a tour. They are usually the first ones to wake up and the last ones to go to sleep. A tour guide double-checks everything before the tour, and keeps double-checking all the arrangements during the tour.
Being a tour guide can be stressful. Tour guides put in long days, and even if they are tired they have to solve any problems that come up along the way, such as lost suitcases and stolen wallets. One of the most important jobs that a tour guide has is making sure that all the customers on the tour are having a great time. Tour guides are paid to make sure that things go smoothly and to help customers get what they need.
Not all tour guides travel with one particular group. Some tour guides work in a specific city and will give driving or walking tours of that city. These types of guides need to know a lot about a particular location, and must want to share their love of that location with others. Other guides have a specialized knowledge of a country, or have a skill that helps them lead an unusual type of trip, such as a safari. “Step-on” guides are hired by a tour company to give a talk or a tour to a visiting group. These guides might get on a tour bus and give a lecture as the bus drives to various locations around a city.
What Does It Take to Be a Good Tour Guide?
Heidi Friederich, a tour guide for more than twenty years, has led trips to France, Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland, and many cities in the United States and Canada.
“To be a good tour guide you need to be organized and flexible. Unexpected things always seem to happen and you must be able to react immediately and solve the problem at once. You also need a good sense of humor so that you can laugh at these disasters later!
“You also need to love being with people for an extended time; often you are together with your group all day and evening. It is tiring but very rewarding when you see how much people appreciate all that you have done for them to make their trip enjoyable.”
Tour guides might lead tours for months at a time, but then have a month or two off to rest up or travel on their own. Tour guides sometimes get to travel to a new place for free to check it out and become familiar with it before leading a group there.
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