Welcome to Guided-Tours.net
The Best Online Source for Guided Tours Information!
Sponsored Links
How To Be a Tour Guide
Being a tour guide is a pretty horrendous business, and not something to voluntarily engage in unless you are financially desperate. This may sound excessively pessimistic, but look at the facts:
Tour guides are considered by all other employees to be a lower form of life. They are routinely ignored, spat at, and otherwise derided - often by members of their own group.
Tour guides say the same things many hundreds of times a day to the same bored-looking people. This may seem obvious to you now, but wait until you've done it for a few days. Or hours.
It is a tour guide's fault if anything at all goes wrong during a tour: a child falls over, it begins to rain, someone receives a parking fine. Anything.
Tour Guides Must Know Everything
From Day One you must attempt to learn everything - from the maximum temperature of a gas-fired kiln to the average number of pots produced by two men working flexible shifts in four calendar months. You must also be aware of obscure monarchs, even more obscure artists and be prepared to answer questions on that statue in the corner of the square hidden by the shrubbery.
Tour Guides Must Make Things Up
Sounds dishonest, but let's face it - the last thing you want if your little girl asks a bizarre question is for the guide to say 'Er, I dunno'. An example:
Small Boy: 'Scuse me - how many tons of clay have been dug up since the beginning of time?
Tour Guide (pretending to do complicated calculations): Well, we can't be sure but we think it's something like 4.5 thousand million metric tons.
Small Boy: Really?!
Tour Guide: Oh yes. Quite definitely, as a matter of fact.
statues of obscure kings and queens often become Henrys I to VI or Anne Boleyn or Anna of Cleves.
Tour Guides Must Speak Loudly
This is not to prevent people asking you to speak up. They never do. A dozen senior citizens will prefer to wait right until the end of the tour, just before you are due to have a lunch break, and then ask you to repeat to them, individually if possible, every word you've said in the last half hour.
Tour Guides Are Not Entertainers
Your astonishing theatrics are unlikely be entertaining; your gag-cracking at the expense of 19th Century clay merchants at a crucial point in the tour will be met with silence. Just speak up and sound interesting, for pity's sake.
Tour Guides Must Work Out the Nationality of Their Visitors
If they speak the same language you do, that's dandy. Unfortunately, you will find visitors from another country to be somewhere on a sliding scale from total fluency to utter incomprehension. Speak very slowly (assuming the latter), unless they look at you with the 'How dare you patronise me?' glare. And whatever you do, don't attempt to speak in their language if you don't know it, as that just adds insult to injury.
And never confuse Americans with Canadians or Australians with New Zealanders.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A378317
Guided Tours Articles
uided Food Tours Highlight Street Vendor Option - Fri, 30 Jul 2010 19:52:05 -0700
Guided food tours of Columbus' specialty food trucks highlight the different ethnic choices in street food.
Jenolan Caves Klingon Tours: Australia Tourist Destination Offers Self-Guided Tours In 'Star Trek' Language
VIDEO - Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:06:58 -0700
What's Your Reaction? Starting August 22, Australia's Jenolan Caves National Park will offer self-guided audio tours in Klingon, according to CNN. The tours, running through Nettle Cave, are already offered in eight languages (which, obviously weren't enough).
uided Walking Tour of Downtown South Ben - Wed, 28 Jul 2010 07:52:20 -0700
The guided walking history tours are this Friday, July 30th, at 7 p.m. and next Friday, August 6th, at 8 p.m. The tours meet at the corner of Washington and Michigan Streets and last about an hour and
an Francisco's Best Hotels for Business Trave - Fri, 30 Jul 2010 09:02:45 -0700
Best Alternative to the Hotel Treadmill: Westin Hotels Guided Running Tours Many runners will tell you that one of the best things about the sport is the fact that it's free. Thankfully, someone at Westin Hotels seems to agree; the company's hotels in 30 cities employ a "running concierge" who leads guests on three-mile runs three mornings a week, free of charge. Now there's no excuse not to ...
ew Geek Destination: Klingon Cave Tour - Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:43:39 -0700
Since "Star Trek: The Experience" is no longer open, here's the next best thing. A company is getting ready to provide self-guided tours of the Jenolan Caves west of Sydney, Australia, and one of the languages soon available for the tours is Klingon. Yes, it is a fictional, completely fabricated Star Trek language, but I'm [...]
uided hike of south slope of Pikes Peak this weeken - Thu, 29 Jul 2010 08:00:44 -0700
The south slope of Pikes Peak is closed to the general public. But you have the opportunity to hike the beautiful, rugged terrain this summer, in a series of guided hikes. One will be this Saturday, July 31. The South Slope ranges from 10,500' to 12,000'. Hike participants will learn about the history of the site, the purpose of the watershed, information about the sensitivity of the site, such ...
tate Capitol Guided Tour - Mon, 26 Jul 2010 17:14:12 -0700
Group guided tours available.
opular Australian tourist destination adds Klingon tour - Thu, 29 Jul 2010 01:53:56 -0700
A popular sightseeing destination in Australia is boldly going where no tourist attraction has gone before -- by offering audio tours in the Klingon language.
ake a guided tour of South Bend's downtow - Wed, 28 Jul 2010 07:59:13 -0700
This Friday you can take a walk back in time in downtown South Bend. The city is hosting guided walking tours. The tours will cover 20 different historical buildings, highlighting the different architectural
elicopter tours provide spectacular ocean and mountain view - Wed, 28 Jul 2010 14:39:55 -0700
Helicopter tours provide spectacular ocean and mountain views