It’s safe to say that not many people have the know-how of being able to interest others with their stories, especially tell inspiring or moving ones.
This skill is especially important in the field of tourism, where people like Kiev tour guides have to know how to present a city or a country in a proper light. Since being a guide can be quite challenging, we’ve made some of the best quality that a tourism guide should possess.
Table of Contents
Being a great communicator
Obviously, the most essential skill for a tour guide is to have great communication skills. Being a bit more introverted is okay, however, you will have to talk to different groups of people every day, so doing it well is important.
This applies for both levels of communication. If you’re speaking to a larger group of people, you should be able to articulate well and be able to project your voice clearly. On a personal level, it’s more important to pay proper attention to the individual you’re talking to and listen well.
Knowing how to hold a conversation
Why being a good speaker is one thing, another thing is the ability to hold a proper conversation with different types of people. This is a skill which is much more difficult to be learned and acquired.
Naturally, even the best communicators can feel a bit of an awkward vibe when meeting a new group of people for the first time. However, for a good tour guide, it shouldn’t be a problem adapting quickly and being able to answer various questions that people might have.
Having a good memory
As a tour guide, not only do you have to remember important stories about a city or country, but also key facts and statistics, like dates and other things. Getting information wrong can be a very bad look for a tour guide, so it’s important to spend plenty of time memorizing something.
Get the most important information on a piece of paper and study everything well. Of course, you can just the read everything from the page on the spot, however, it won’t be that good of a look on you,
Improvisation
Sometimes things go the way they are planned and certain people will have certain things in mind about the places they visit. A tour guide should be able to bounce off the energy of the people that they’re with.
You might need to switch the story up a bit, slow things down, be able to answer questions or clarify some things in order to make the experience more enjoyable. So, simply don’t follow the script as they say as you should be able to adapt to different situations.
Enthusiasm
Being passionate, no matter your job is alway great, and if you’re an enthusiast when it comes to teaching others about a city or country, it’s a great chance that people will feed off of the same energy.
Simply faking it rarely does the trick and people will think twice about going on further tours with you around the city.
Sense of humor
Humor is the best tool to slice through a tense or awkward atmosphere. Being able to understand or even tell a few jokes to your audience is always a plus, and can make your guides more entertaining.
Being punctual
While a minor thing, a guide that’s always late to meet their guests is always a bad look for themselves and the company. If you don’t want to have a frustrated group of goers on your hands, always be on time.
Having the right local knowledge
If you’re a tour guide that’s operating in your local town or country, it’s best to know as much as possible about the place, not just plain facts that anyone with a phone and an internet connection can read off Wikipedia.
While not always the case, it seems that the best guides are either the ones that grew up and lived in the region, or at least those who are very well accustomed and knowledgeable about it. It could be a few neat stories or anecdotes from the locals that can make the whole experience much more entertaining and worthwhile for the goers.
All in all
In this article, we’ve talked about the essential skills that every tour guide should have. No matter whether you are one that’s operating locally or international, in order to be good at your job, you have a certain passion for it, have enough knowledge and have an adequate set of communication skills.
Just think about it, do you think people would go on guided tours if every person would be stating the same boring facts every time? We don’t think so. This job certainly requires a specific set of skills, and most of them you can work on fairly easily.
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