Not everyone is fit to be a great tour guide. As the backbone and frontline of traveling operations, tour guides are often responsible for making guests’ experiences seamless, informative, and entertaining. Their job entails more than just reading facts off the sheet.
So, if you are looking to hire a professional travel guide, you will need to look at several key qualities. Some of these qualities include the following:
Communication
Your tour guides are the ambassadors for your travel agency, so they require diplomatic skills. They should communicate easily and clearly with guests.
People with strong communication skills have effective body language, great listening skills, confident voice, and language proficiency.
Indeed, tour guides often spend a lot of time talking but also have good listening skills. This way, they can answer questions, build rapport, and identify early signs that guests could be unhappy.
Decisiveness and Leaderships
Decisiveness and leadership are two vital skills tour guides should have. While they must be funny and friendly, they must also maintain some authority.
There will be situations where they might make decisions, and probably faster. To do that, they must have decisiveness and leadership skills.
Punctuality and Organization
Apart from dressing nicely, being organized may encompass setting expectations before taking the lead in tours. It may also involve informing tourists of the time, length, and location of their tours, not to mention what to carry and special considerations or rules. So, your guide requires organization skills to run through the structures of all tours in advance.
In addition, your tour guide will require great time management skills. They shouldn’t let customers wait for them and must end tours on time.
Empathetic
An excellent tour guide knows how to engage with various types of personalities and navigate the dynamics of a group. This is often an underrated skill that shouldn’t go unnoticed.
The best tour guide will read the dynamics of a group and look for great ways of connecting them so they can have a good experience. For example, sightseeing tours can attract customers, from friends to couples and families.
Knowledgeable
Someone might be the most charismatic guide globally, but they can lose clients if they don’t know their stuff. Knowing what they are really talking about is part of the tour guides’ job. This may mean figures, facts, and everything else someone on tours can throw at them.
So, it is important to hire a knowledgeable tour guide – someone who is clued up on everything clients need to know would be better.
Sense of Humor
Facts about destinations are very interesting to tour guides, but making them more fascinating to their clients will need a sense of humor.
This trait will help to put clients like you at ease. Plus, you will be comfortable to talk to your guide and ask whatever questions you might have.
Finding the best tour guides involves due diligence, strategy, and intuition. As the backbone or frontline of a trip, a tour guide has the power to foster meaningful connections and cultivate memorable experiences. This is why it is important to prioritize a tour guide with some, if not all, of the above qualities.
