Would you like to become a tour guide? Whether you're interested in volunteering to host tours in your home town, or would like to travel the world and get paid to do it, this page can help! Read on to learn how to become a tour guide.
Expertvillage: How to Become a Tour Guide : Overview of Tour Guide Career
There were a lot of videos available on how to become a tour guide and most of them seem to be by this person, see below. I chose this one because it is an excellent overview of the tour guide career. Cherie Anderson has been a tour director around the world, developed training programs for this field, and now has her own company. She covers the different areas in which a professional tour director can work, clears up misunderstandings, tells us what kind of person might like the work, and gives some insight into this career. In just over a minute you will start to become oriented to the tour guide profession and can choose your own informed next steps in continuing to learn about it.
Step 1: What Does a Tour Guide Do?
The responsibilities of a tour guide will vary with the tour and the company, but as a tour guide you may be expected to assume a number of responsibilities in addition to providing information and leading activities associated with the tour:
- Meet their clients at the airport, accompany them to the hotel, assign rooms, deal with missing luggage, and manage all aspects of meals and transportation during the tour.
- Explain the itinerary and schedule, and make sure everyone in the party is where they are supposed to be when they are supposed to be there.
- Handle health emergencies and manage last minute changes and conflicts.
- Keeping each member of the group happy and interest them in signing up for another tour with the company.
- Manage the budget and prepare reports.
Step 2: Identify Your Strengths
Tour guides need to have an in depth knowledge of their subject, and be able to convey it to the people on the tour.
- Do you speak several languages fluently?
- Have you lived in the area for a long time?
- Do you have experience in specific topic-- such as baking, wine tasting, herb gardens, or architecture that tour companies may be looking for?
- Have you done research or published articles on the topic of a potential tour? Tour companies like to be able to publish the credentials of their tour guides.
- Do you have teaching or corporate training experience that demonstrates your ability to convey information?
- Customer service experience will also be helpful.
Step 3: Find a Tour Company
- If you think you might like to become a tour guide, investigate opportunities close to home first, to see if the field is a good fit for you. Contact your local city or state's tourist board to identify local organizations that may be looking for volunteer tour guides.
- After you've established that you are seriously interested in becoming a tour guide, you should prepare a resume, and identify tour companies that you would like to work for. The United States Tour Operators Association has a database of member organizations you can use to find potential employers.
In Conclusion
How many careers have you read about that don't immediately say you have to have this and that training and years of education first? It looks like this career may give opportunities for employment to a wider range of people.
Now that you have been introduced to the career of tour guide, you can continue your research further if it interests you by doing further reading, exploring additional education and training, watching videos, talking to people etc. Before investing in this idea further, as with all career choices, it would be prudent to search for current job ads in this area to determine what qualifications, experience, job functions and other requirements are being asked for in this career and how available job opportunities are so that you can get a sense of real possibilities.
