What makes a good guided tour

Get help to get organized. Try to get a volunteer to check people in so you can chat with tour goers. People give tours for many reasons, but a big one is to meet new people, and the time before the tour is a great chance to get to know your group.

Tell a story, share your passion, get your tour group engaged in the places and sites you're excited about. End on time. Or try very hard to. Try like crazy to end on time. Nobody wants to feel like they are in tour jail. Tours on paper always seem too short and on the ground are always too long. Two hours is the absolute maximum. An hour to an hour and a half is better.

An ideal tour guide communicates effectively. An ideal guide engages tourists by asking them questions and looking for their feedback. Being a good listener helps understand tourists better, their opinions and interests. To engage tourists and keep them interested, an ideal tour guide keeps the storytelling short and simple; it is clear, correct, concrete, concise and complete in order to have tourists memorize the information.

To do a job well, one must love doing it and be passionate about it. Being a tour guide is not easy; the amount of passion affects the performance. The lack of passion in a tourist guide affects the amount of enthusiasm in tourists.

Being a tour guide requires a lot of energy; spending time with people, large groups or small groups of them, drains energy easily. One must have plenty of it to make it through the day and make a tour successful. If a tour guide is not an outgoing person, there is a high possibility of a tour ending up as a disaster to the tourists. One of the most important traits of a tour guide is a good sense of humor. Tourists do get tired of walking around, listening to all the facts.

History might not be that interesting, sometimes some information about tragic events is shared, so telling a joke when the things get down or tourists get a bit tired will shake them up and get them back on track. An ideal tourist guide provides accurate and interesting information about the visited place.

Each city or attraction is unique in its own way, and there is always something unusual and interesting for foreigners to learn.

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Open Mobile Menu. All Posts. We have included 3 of the characteristics you should have to be a good guide. To view all 10, download our useful checklist here: 1. Find out the 10 qualities that every tour guide should have:.