We believe a trip is incomplete till you get to know the ins and outs of the destination and tourist spots. The person that does this best is your Tour Guide. He might not be along with you on the flight or while sleeping on the hotel bed, but if he is good he is your best travel companion. A good tour guide can make or break the trip. If he is bad, you will probably feel ripped off and feel like when the hell this tour will end. If he is good, you will cherish every moment and the guide will live on forever in your tales. Here is what to seek or what makes a tour guide good.
Deep Knowledge – It is the most important parameter that defines a tour guide. He got to have knowledge about local restaurants, food joints, tourist spots, history, present, future of the city, what it takes to go for that hike, or what is unique about the city, and precisely more the better.
Accuracy of Knowledge – There are few bad chaps in tour guide industry too, who will make up an answer they don’t know. It’s better if they are bold to say a No, rather than falsification.
Set the comfort zone – As a traveller you are out of your city, home or offices. You are likely to feel a little awkward in whole new settings. But a good tour guide will bring you to ease. He will ensure you open up to this new city. A good tour guide ensures you do everything worth fun and as planned.
Punctual and well organized – A must have to be good tour guide. You can’t have a guide coming up one hour late and missing a spot, or worse making you miss your flight back home.
Good Sense of humour – Tour guides most of the time as answering about history, kings, that ruins of past. Obviously it could get a little boring. To make things better, they need to have little bit of humour. This adds blissful moments to all that listening experience.
Storyteller – All work no play makes it dull. A good Tour Guide will be insert too many of stories relating to people from all around the world, facts, and their own, to add an element of fun.
Passionate and Fresh – If guide is merely driven by bread and butter he might not be a good one. But finding love in work is necessary, like joy of meeting new people, and be always fresh as cucumber.
Good listener – Mostly its bunch of travellers that a tour guide has liability for, which doesn’t means he has to be a headless leader. A good ear to traveller’s queries makes a tour guide good at his job. Not just queries, but their feelings, their stories, and sometimes their troubles too.
A Local – Though this is not an absolute necessity. But a local who also is a tour guide makes a perfect fit. The kind of exposure he has to the city, an outsider will never have.
Energetic – Travelling also means holiday (Unless you are on a business trip), and holidays mean laziness, lethargy. A good tour guide has to be energetic enough to pass the vibes, and keep the flock moving. Also a dull, tired guide would not look good leading a patch.
Understandable accent – Truly, if you get a guide that speaks in some accent born in countryside of a country you never been to, there might be a problem. Also he must have good language skills.
Multi Lingual – This one goes a long way, and it also tests the learning curve of tour guide. HE got have command on few other languages too. This makes conversation able and fun too.
Involvement – Simply by telling travellers that this was built by XYZ, or ABC was an alumnus, doesn’t helps. A good tour guide will show a picture of XYZ, or read a chapter of book written by ABC. A great move will be to send a transcript of every day to each visitor by mail with all info.
Have respect for each lifestyle – In the tour group there might be vegans, or Texans, blondes, or olds. People with different believes. A good tour guide will equally respect them as they are.
Good network – A tour guide has to be very networked individual, not only to people from his industry like hotels, taxi owners, other tour guides, officials from local tourism board, but also with restaurants, doctors, artists, police, ticket vendors of popular entry based spots. It helps a lot.
Out of the Box – Our lives wouldn’t have been more fun if surprises didn’t existed. A good guide will probably end the tour with a surprise, like gifting a souvenir, or taking you to a place that wasn’t part of the deal, you might sing a local song on a dinner night in between, and things like that.
People don’t take trips, trips take people!
