No sooner do we speak of guides, the wrinkled face man who would mingle a lot of fables with few historical facts begin to emerge. Almost all of us, the tourists and the professional in the business of tourism, have come to form a custom image of the guides, irrespective of the fact that guiding and escorting tours are a highly professional business and require accomplished special skills.

“TRAVEL GUIDE-TO INSPIRE YOUR NEXT JOURNEY”

• Who is a Guide?

Finding an answer to this question that would be acceptable Universally is a difficult task, in fact, the perceptions about travel guide differ from region to region. we can, therefore, select some of the more commonly sought traits in guides and arrive at a definition which is rather broad in scope. One good definition is given below:

“Tourist guide has information about a place designed for the use of visitors or tourist. They usually have information about sights, accommodation, restaurants, transportation and activities. Travel guide leads a group of tourists to & from various destinations while taking care of the logistics.”

TOURIST EXPECTATIONS

The knowledge of a tourist group’s expectations from its guide is an extremely helpful tool in charting your course of action. The tourists demand from the accuracy of their guide with regard to the knowledge of facts, to deal with tricky situations and sympathy concerning their problems, however, a trifle in nature they may be.

• Being a guide is all about having strong communication skills.
• Guides just not be able to communicate well, they should be a great conversationalist with an outgoing personality.

ROLE OF THE GUIDE

The role of the guide, as it is perceived today, has a history. it is intact a mixture of two different roles I.e. are one, who traditionally lead the way on an unknown terrain and secondly, an adviser on any kind of travel. The two roles don’t always harmonize yet exist in a guide in varying proportions today. In this context of our own country we can then say that in the former rules we have location guides and, in the latter, there are guides for city tours too.

LOCATION GUIDES-

Location guides are the leaders that take the tourist through unknown partially known terrain. Since the nature of the field differs widely, the guide’s role also varies. Depending on the setting, the tourist and their purpose of the visit we can categorize location guides in India under several heads. Here we have selected the three most common types for some details:

Monuments– These are the most commonly found guides who are specialized in describing the monumental Heritage of the country.

Museums– Museum is a fantastic place for a guide to describe. It is here that the role of the guide, both as an educator & as an entertainer, comes to fruition.

Wildlife– Wildlife Tourism is potentially one of the most viable and economically rewarding areas of tourism. Hence, it is imperative on a tourism professional and more so on wildlife guide to understand its intricacies and use this information to the fullest advantage.

CITY TOURS-

The things you must remember for city tour guides areas,

• The length of the trip should not be very taxing physically
• There should be adequate stops during the trip
• Sufficient time should be made available for shopping.

The only thing we would like to lay stress on is that the guide is a public relations representative for his site, City, region and country in all situations.