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Tour Conducting

Chapter 1

History of Tour Guiding

 During the era of great ancient empires from 3,000
BC to 500AD, ancient Persians, Assyrians, and
Egyptians started traveling in organized manner.
 Herodotus, an ancient Greek historian, became the
first travel writer by writing his own eye-witness
account of his travels to what is known now as
Western Asia, Northern Africa and Greece in his
book Histories.

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History of Tour Guiding

 During the Renaissance period, a customary travel
of group of upper-class young men called the
Grand Tour emerged. It has served as an
educational rite of passage for young men once
they reached 21 years of age.
 Thomas Cook was an English businessman and
became the father of modern tourist industry. He
founded the travel agency Thomas Cook & Son
along with his son, John Mason Cook.

Tourism Industry in the

Philippines
 Tourism industry contributed 12.2% to the
country’s GDP in 2017.
 Tourism industry also contributed P1.929 trillion in
2017 compared to P1.552 trillion in 2016.
 Foreign tourist arrival from January-September
2018 reached 5,362,533, 8.32% higher than last
year's same period with 4,950,683.

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Tourism Industry in the

Philippines
 Top 10 Foreign Market by country (in volumes)

Why take a tour?

 The freedom from hassles and decision making
 A good tour leader solves problems long before tour
members can become aware of them.
 The desire to save time and money
 A well-designed and conducted tour minimizes wasted
time; it ensures that the client sees all the essentials in a
convenient, efficient manner.
 The companionship of people with similar interests
 The price of a tour, its destination and its activities will
automatically predetermine the socioeconomic level and
interests of group members.

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Why take a tour?

 The educational nature of touring
 A well-trained tour guide or escort can comment on
almost everything: history, geography, architecture,
trees, etc., - something a tourist can’t learn on his own.
 The lack of alternatives
 A traveler who perceives a destination as especially
strange, foreign, unfriendly, or even dangerous will find
comfort in the notion of a tour.

How people buy tours?

Tour operators make their products available to the
public in two distinct ways:
1. Public/Per-capita tours – series of tours occurring on
a regularly scheduled basis. Tours not filled in can be
cancelled and shift the client to another schedule.
2. Customized tours – tours sold to preformed affinity
groups with customization of the schedule and itinerary
at a special price.

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Types of Tour Guides

• A tour guide is someone who takes people on
sightseeing excursion of limited duration.
1. On-site guide – conducts tours of one or several hours
at a specific building, attraction, or limited area.
 Docents – volunteer museum guides

1. City guide – points out and comments on the

highlights of a city, usually from a motor coach,
minibus, or van, but sometimes part of a walking tour.

Types of Tour Guides

 Driver-guide – a city guide who does double duty by driving

the vehicle while narrating.
 Personal/Private guide – takes small number of
individuals on an exclusive tour at reasonable price.
3. Specialized guide – someone whose expertise or skills
are highly unique.
4. Step-on guide – freelance guide who come aboard their
motor coaches to give an informed overview of the city

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Tour Managers
• A person who manages a group’s movement over a
multi-day tour is called tour managers.
• They are also called tour escorts, tour leaders, tour
directors, tour conductors, and in Europe, tour
couriers.
• Tour managers can be attached to any of the
following:

Employers of Tour Managers

• Tour Operators
- They are also known as tour companies, tour packagers,
tour brokers or wholesalers.
- Contracts with hotels, restaurants, attractions, airlines,
motorcoach, operators, and other transportation
companies/carriers to create a multi-day tour package.
- Sells their packages to the public either directly or
through travel agents.
- Inbound tour operator – is a subcategory of tour
operator who specializes mostly in groups arriving in a
specific city, area, or country.

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Employers of Tour Managers

(Tour Operators cont.)

- Outbound tour operator – another subcategory

of tour operator, takes groups from a given city or
country to another city or another country.
- Motorcoach operator – creates tours, usually of
about a week’s duration, that transport group
members via motorcoach to their destination and
back.
- Intermodal operator – combines several forms of
transportation, such as plane, bus, ship, and rail, to
create a diversified and efficient tour package.

Other Employers of Tour

Managers and Guides
• Incentive house – a specialized tour company who will
approach a corporation with an overall strategy to boost
sales, service, or efficiency by providing some sort of reward
or incentive to the corporation’s most productive employees.
• Educational tours and adventure tours – specialized tour
companies with their leaders who are professional in other
field.
• Meet-and-greet companies – with guides and escorts on
hand when individuals or small group arrive at the airport.

• Convention/Meeting planners – hires guides and tour

managers to operate pre- or post-convention tours for them.

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Other Tour-related Job

Opportunities
 Reservations – deals with travel agents and the public via
telephone and email.
 Sales representative – serves as contact person between
travel agencies and tour operators.
 Marketing personnel – choreographs the company’s
advertising and generally facilitate the design and
distribution of the tour product.
 Operations staff members – ensures that tours are well-
planned and function smoothly.
 Executives – has the ultimate responsibility for the
company’s success and for the performance of the
workers.


The Appeal of Tour Guiding

• Glamour
A tour conductor is paid to to travel the world, stay in
splendid hotels, and enjoy fine cuisine. They can often
choose when and where to work.
• Challenge
A tour manager must have certain well-defined
personality traits that are further refined through
experiences – making decision instantly, calm an iraate
passenger, break through obstinate hotel clerk, or
improvise entertaiment when a motorcoach breaks down.

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The Appeal of Tour Guiding

• Salary and Benefits
Some guides are paid hourly while some are paid per
day. When assessing the profitability of tour conducting,
one must go beyond mere salary and examine the perks as
well:
- Transportation, accommodation and most meals are
complimentary.
- Tipping is another source of revenue.
- Sales commission on optionals provide important
income to tour managers in certain companies.
*optionals – a tour component that is not included in the tour
price that a client can purchase during the tour.

The Appeal of Tour Guiding

(Salary and Benefits cont.)

- Commission or kickback on certain extras when

steering group to some factories, souvenir shops, etc.
- Since they are considered independent contractors and
technically self-employed, they are able to take a large tax
deduction.
- Many companies give them per diem allowance aside
from their per diem salary
- A few companies place tour directors on a list that
qualifies them for reduced airfares; some of them could
acquire frequent flyer miles as long as their air tickets aren't
free or at special industry rates.

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Downside of Tour Management

● Escorting can be a tough and demanding job.
● Tour conductors live out of a suitcase. The timing
and number of tours made available to a tour
conductor is thoroughly unpredictable.
● A tour manager is responsible for dozens of people
so stress is inevitable. They are technically on duty
24/7 throughout the duration of a tour.
● Yet a good training and practiced strategies can
transform the stresses of tour conducting into
bracing set of challenges

The Tour Manager Personality

 Six general categories of a tour manager
personality:
1. An outgoing personality. Tour managers are usually
quite articulate, with a well-developed sense of humor, solid
conversational skills, and the ability to entertain people with
their stories and anecdotes.
2. Decisiveness. Natural leaders who command respect,
they are emotionally controlled, and able to anticipate a
problem before it arises or be persistent until it is solved.
3. People skills. A tour director is expected to be courteous,
patient, sensitive, caring, unselfish, diplomatic, even-
tempered, and tactful yet firm.

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The Tour Manager Personality

4. Organizational skills. They are conscious of
details, punctual, and thoroughly responsible. Flexibility
is also as productive as accuracy.
5. Research skills. A tour manager must keep up on
all sorts of facts such as phone and postal costs, tipping,
forex, weather, etc. They are sometime expected to have
studied history, geography, botany, and zoology of the
visited area.
6. A sense of ethics. The tour conductor must balance
fairness to the client with loyalty to the company.

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