Ever wanted to travel the world and get paid?
Does the sound of staying at fine hotels and eating at exquisite restaurants around the world appeal to you? Do you love people and always being on the road? Then you definitely need to tune into today’s video, where we talk about three jobs where you can do exactly that!
Terminology in the guiding world can sometimes be confusing, and honestly there is a lot of overlap between the job descriptions of a tour guide, tour leader and tour director/manager. Today we break down some of the differences in these three jobs, and how best to get a paid position in the travel industry.
Hopefully this video will provide a little clarification to those looking for a job or at the very least, make you aware of some of the other exciting positions available in the travel industry.
-Kelsey T
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Are you presently working as a tour leader or tour guide? What is your job title and what are your responsibilities? Any advice for new leaders who are trying to break into the industry?
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Transcript:
Hi there and welcome, I am Kelsey from the Be a Better Guide Project and you are at another Community Q and A.
So our question today often comes from people who are looking to get jobs in the travel industry, and they want to travel the world and work.
The question usually goes something along the lines of, “What is the difference between a tour guide, a tour director or tour manager, and a tour leader?
What do all these terms mean, and what are the jobs that go with them?” So let’s take a look at some of these terms and how they are used in the real world. At the end I think you are going to see there are a lot more overlap and it’s not quite so cut and dry.
Firstly, let us take a look at the term “tour guide” and how it’s traditionally used. Tour guide usually refers to an individual who has a specialty or an expertise, or particular knowledge, and they are engaged to a tour that’s generally shorter.
A perfect example would be someone who gives a city tour. You are going to San Francisco and you want a tour guide for the afternoon, they can walk you around.
The terms or jobs, tour director and tour manager are often used pretty interchangeably.
This refers to somebody who is in charge of a longer tour generally, and they are kind of responsible to make sure everything goes smoothly, so some of their responsibilities include coordinating all the logistics, any sort of social coordination or making social events happen.
They might also be, kind of like a go-to person, if something happens on a tour, that tour manager or tour director is who you would go to, to get that problem sorted out.
A great way to think about that is if you have got a tour director or tour manager they might work with many different tour guides.
The tour managers and tour directors will often find work in the incentives industry, and the meetings and conferences industry.
These both refer to the corporate world. Incentives industry refers to vacations that are offered as incentives or bonuses to their employees.
Think, IBM might want to offer a paid weeks’ vacation in Honolulu to their senior most executives at the end of the year, kind of as a reward for their great work, or it could be a reward or incentive to get employees to work harder.
They will work with destination management companies to plan out the tour, and IBM is busy doing computer stuff so they don’t have time to plan that whole vacation.
They are going to work with the company, and they are going to have a tour manager or tour director who will work with all those employees as they arrive. They will pick them up at the airport, coordinate with the hotels, and make sure that experience is a great one.
The meetings and conferences industry is the same sort of thing, but these are more based around business events.
So say there is a big conference happening in Los Angeles, there is going to be destination management companies there as well who are may be managing smaller activities, say after the conference we have got a week and they’ll set up activities.”
So that’s mainly where you will find work as tour director and tour manager. Sometimes that can be travelling, but sometimes that can be staying at home because you might come and manage that tour for that week, and then that group goes and another group comes in.
Or, some positions, and those are the prime positions if you love to travel, you’ll actually go to many different destinations, and meet many different groups.
Okay, that seems fairly clear, but what about the term ‘tour leader’? What does that job refer to? Generally, a tour leader refers to somebody who works for a group travel company.
So think of hiking destination companies, or cycling destination companies, or even cultural ones where you go and you gather into a group, often times strangers but maybe it could a private group, and you have say a week long experience somewhere.
The tour leader role kind of combines some of the tour guide and some of the tour director, kind of wrapped into a new role, because they are not only the go-to person but they are coordinating logistics, they are going to make sure everyone is having a good time, those sorts of things, but they will probably have some specific knowledge, too.
Okay, but there’s two kickers you should keep in mind. The first kicker is that these terms are not set in stone, and they are often used interchangeably.
For example, back roads company might prefer the term ‘tour leader’, while country walkers might prefer a term like ‘tour guide’. Even for tour managers sometime they are referred to as, sort of experience ambassadors.
I know the company Gap Adventures, it’s a Canadian company, they use the term CEO, a Chief Experience Officer. So these terms are going to vary a lot depending on which company you want to work for.
The second kicker is that for all of these positions, you pretty much require the same underlying skill set. Now of course, depending on what company you work for or are applying to, you might need specific experience or specific knowledge.
Whether you are tour guide, tour leader, tour director, chief experience officer, you are going to need to be able to be great with people. That’s what it boils down to.
You are going to need to be able to be an active listener, solve complex problems, handle complex logistics, be detail oriented, be friendly, positive, enthusiastic, have a positive energy, and generally make people feel at ease while they are travelling and give them incredible experiences.
I hope that helped answer some of your questions about the difference between those roles, and how they are used in the industry.
Instead of a Tweet-able today I was thinking that maybe we could just let some of friends and peers about the Be a Better Guide Project, and invite them to join in and join the conversation.
Speaking of conversation, let me know what you thought in the comments below. Subscribe if you haven’t yet, and thanks for being here. I will see you next time.
