Ways and means to improve the quality of tour guides

Modern tour guide service has the characteristics of strong independence, combination of mental and physical labor, complexity and high correlation. For modern tour guides, if they want to be competent for this challenging career, they must have corresponding qualities. This is well-known common sense, needless to say. But if you ask further, what qualities should a qualified tour guide have? How to cultivate these qualities? And what is the general quality of tour guides in China at present? What influence does the quality of tour guides have on the development of modern tourism in China? This topic is not clear in a few words. This paper attempts to discuss the above issues around the central topic of tour guide quality, with a view to attracting the attention of people in the industry and related experts, and paying attention to and discussing how to improve the quality of tour guides in China as soon as possible to promote the development of modern tourism in China.

First of all, a qualified modern tour guide should have the basic qualities.

Anyone who has participated in the tour guide qualification examination should remember that in the introduction of "Tour Guide Practice", we were told that "tour guide service is a highly intelligent service based on high personal quality, which has a wide range of influence, which is determined by the requirements put forward by the characteristics of tour guide service for tour guides. The characteristics of strong independence require tour guide service personnel to dare to challenge difficulties and improve their abilities in the process of overcoming difficulties; The characteristics of high combination of brain and body require tour guides to have extensive knowledge and healthy body, so as to provide the required services for tourists anytime and anywhere; The complex and changeable characteristics require tour guides to have a high sense of responsibility and professionalism, as well as psychological self-control ability, and be able to calmly cope with various changing situations and problems; The characteristics of high correlation require tour guides to have a global concept, be clear-headed and thoughtful in their work, and have strong coordination and public relations skills to ensure the smooth progress of tourism activities as planned. " (Note 1)

So what are the qualities of tour guides? Generally speaking, it includes physical quality, ideological quality and professional quality. Physical quality refers to a healthy body and a sound spirit, which is the basis for tour guides to engage in their work. We often say that "health is the capital of revolution". In fact, the body is also the capital of a tour guide. Without this capital, how can you lead tourists to travel far and wide? Ideological quality includes a person's love, professional ethics and code of conduct, which are the soul of a tour guide, and the nobleness or meanness of the soul determines the difference between people's words and deeds and your attitude towards work and clients. Professional quality includes professional requirements and skills, which directly determines the work effectiveness and service level of tour guides.

The love of modern tour guides is very important. We used to emphasize patriotism and love for enterprises, which is of course very important, but we can't stop there. We also need to have a caring heart, a loving feeling of "providing for the old and providing for the young", a humanistic spirit of helping the poor, and a life attitude of loving nature and life. It is these that determine the quality of tour guides, the quality of service, the literary grace of manners and the fineness of work.

Second, how do tour guides cultivate and improve their personal qualities?

We have defined the basic qualities that a tour guide should have, so how should a tour guide cultivate and improve his personal qualities?

I think, first, we should develop good living habits, be honest, optimistic and cheerful, exercise regularly and keep healthy. The daily work of tour guides is very stressful, and they are hungry if they eat irregularly. Taking a group out to contact with various religions is inevitably tempted by various bad habits. The more so, the more attention should be paid to maintaining good living habits and insisting on physical exercise. I have met many young tour guides who play mahjong all night when they are not taking a tour group. They are dizzy during the day and can't work normally. In the long run, how do they keep their professional requirements suitable?

Second, we should pay attention to strengthening personal cultivation in our daily life. In the traditional culture of China, we have always advocated and attached importance to individual spiritual cultivation. For example, "save my body three times a day" means that people should always pay attention to self-reflection in their daily lives, which is indeed a good way to improve their self-cultivation; The ancients also advocated "cautious independence", which means that the more unsupervised you are, the more you should pay attention to your own behavior. Tour guides are very independent in their work and often far away from the supervision of leaders, so this spirit of "cautious independence" is very needed. With this spirit, they can "get out of the mud without getting stained" in the face of all kinds of bad temptations.

Third, we should pay attention to the habit of studying anytime and anywhere in our intense daily work. Speaking of study, many tour guides complain that they don't have enough study time. In fact, in the final analysis, learning needs to form a good habit. Mr. Lu Xun once said, "I spend all the time when others drink coffee at work." "Time is like water in a sponge, and it will always be squeezed out." Imagine if we could squeeze in some time to read and study? The ancients paid attention to the use of "three times" in reading and writing, that is, "immediately, on the pillow and in the toilet". Of course, modern health knowledge tells us that this "three times" is not good for health, but what we need is this spirit. In daily work and life, tour guides not only study book knowledge in a formal and systematic way, but also study in a large social classroom. This kind of learning needs the spirit of "three diligence", that is, "oral diligence, hand diligence and brain diligence", that is, diligent exploration, diligent memory and diligent thinking; Pay attention to learn from the people around you, "the feet are short, the inches are long" and "there must be a teacher in a threesome". Your leading colleagues, including the tourists you come into contact with, are all your good teachers, so you should pay attention to absorbing their strengths. As long as you persist for a long time, you will certainly accumulate a lot of money and reach a level of ease in your work.

Third, the actual quality of China's tour guides and their reasons

Since 1980s, with the development of modern tourism in China, the tour guide team in China has been gradually established. Tour guides have made due contributions to the development of China's tourism industry, made painstaking efforts, and emerged many outstanding talents and advanced deeds. What is particularly commendable is that our country's tour guides have achieved the above achievements without stable salary income and reliable social security, which also shows that the basic quality of our country's tour guides is still good. However, we should also be soberly aware that compared with developed countries in the world, there is still a big gap in the quality of tour guides in China, which cannot adapt to and meet the current situation and needs of the sustained, rapid and healthy development of modern tourism in China; Needless to say, there is a mixed phenomenon among tour guides in China at present. Some tour guides are poor in quality and ability, even forget their own interests and lack integrity. These phenomena have corrupted and are affecting the professional image of tour guides in China. In recent years, the professional evaluation of tour guides in our society is poor, which shows that the overall quality of tour guides in our country is really unsatisfactory.

After careful analysis, the reasons for the above phenomenon are complicated and various. From a big perspective, the fundamental improvement of the party style and social atmosphere takes time and requires the joint efforts of the whole society; The employment system and social security system of tourism in China need to be brought into the legal track; There are generally low-level internal competition and disorderly competition in China's tourism industry; Industry management lags behind the rapid development of tourism market; Tour guide training needs to be improved from form to content; The low entry threshold of the industry leads to the low political quality and cultural quality of employees, which all affect the overall quality of tour guides in China.

Fourthly, the low quality of tour guides has become one of the bottlenecks restricting the development of China's tourism industry.

"Although the tour guide service, like other services, is a part of the tourist reception service, compared with other services, it is the tour guide service that connects all the services of the tourist reception, making the sales of products and services of the corresponding service departments and units a reality, meeting the needs of tourists in the process of traveling, making the tourism products of tourist destinations enter consumption and finally realizing their value." (Note 2), the above views have become the * * * knowledge of international tourism today. Tour guide service is also an important channel to spread culture, and tour guides also play an important role as "folk ambassadors" in international exchanges, so we have to admit that the quality of tour guides and the quality of tour guide services directly determine the overall level of a country's modern tourism industry; At present, the low quality of tour guides in China has indeed become one of the bottlenecks restricting the development of modern tourism in China.

Five, strive to improve the overall quality of our tour guides as soon as possible.

In view of the complexity and diversity of the reasons for the low quality of tour guides in China, it has actually become a systematic project to improve the overall quality of tour guides in China as soon as possible. To mobilize the strength of the tourism industry and even the whole society, Qi Xin should make concerted efforts, brainstorm ideas and take a multi-pronged approach to achieve results.

First of all, the administrative organs at all levels of the tourism industry in China should strengthen their daily management and strive to provide better services for tour guides. Because the government of a modern society, while exercising administrative power, needs to provide high-quality and efficient public products and services for the whole society, which is also the obligation and unshirkable responsibility of governments at all levels. The government should do something, and all kinds of investment behaviors in the tourism market should allow investors to develop themselves in accordance with the laws and regulations of the market economy at their own risk, and shift the focus of government work to maintaining fair market rules, maintaining normal market order, improving investment environment and providing quality services. In the interest game between tourism enterprises and tour guides, the administrative department should effectively supervise whether the enterprises abide by the relevant national laws and the labor and employment system, and bring the tour guides into the social security system as soon as possible to solve their worries; We should assist tour guides to establish tour guides' trade union organizations according to China's trade union law, change their relatively weak position, safeguard their legitimate rights and interests, and support their reasonable interests. In tour guide training, we should constantly sum up experience and make full use of existing resources and modern scientific and technological means in training forms, such as trying online training, TV teaching, vocational education and even academic education in the form of credit system to meet the needs of tour guides to improve their quality; In the training content, we should pay more attention to practicality, interaction and interest, pay attention to actual results, and avoid becoming a mere formality; We can also carry out quality assessment, skill test and talent evaluation of tour guides to better serve the tourism human resources market.

With the development of China's tourism industry and the improvement of people's education level, it is of great significance to consider appropriately raising the restrictive requirements for China's tour guides' professional qualifications and academic level, which will improve the overall quality of our tour guides. Considering the overall situation of this work and the economic and cultural differences in various regions of China, we should be cautious in the process of formulation and implementation. You can organize relevant departments and experts to fully demonstrate first, or you can consider implementing it in economically and culturally developed areas first, summing up experience and then gradually popularizing it.

Secondly, tourism enterprises in China play a vital role in improving the quality of tour guides. Managers of tourism enterprises should realize that the quality of tour guides is directly related to the survival and development of tourism enterprises, and the relationship between enterprises and tour guides is interdependent. In the use and training of tour guides, we should not only pay attention to the use of training, but also be willing to invest some manpower, material resources and financial resources in the on-the-job training of tour guides. With the improvement of enterprise benefits, it is necessary to increase the salary of tour guides accordingly, solve their practical difficulties and eliminate their worries; We should also pay attention to building our own corporate culture, improving corporate cohesion and establishing our own brand image of tour guides, which plays an extremely important role in stabilizing the tour guide team.

Furthermore, and most importantly, tour guides should pay attention to the improvement of their own quality. We must fully realize that only by truly improving our own quality can we gain a foothold in the increasingly competitive tourism market. It is necessary to understand the truth that "those who respect themselves always value themselves", love their country and enterprises, love their posts and work hard, adhere to professional ethics, safeguard their professional image, and work together to improve the social evaluation of tour guides as soon as possible. Only in this way can we really improve the social status of tour guides. We must also unite and have the courage to safeguard our legitimate rights and interests; Learn to use normal channels to exercise their right to speak and put forward their reasonable interests through legal channels. In fact, this is also the quality that a tour guide with modern spirit should have.

Finally, in the work of improving the quality of tour guides in China as soon as possible, we must not ignore the important role of tourists and experts in tourism education. Because tourists are the main body of the tourism market and the ultimate consumers of tourism products and services, it should be said that their evaluation of the quality of tour guides is the most authoritative; Tourists' high-level requirements for the quality of tour guides are the pressure and motivation to urge tour guides to improve their own quality as soon as possible. A mature tourism market is inseparable from mature tourists. When tourists encounter low-quality tour guides and acts that infringe on their own interests, they should dare to resist and complain and resolutely safeguard their legitimate rights and interests. Similarly, tourists should also give praise and encouragement, understand the hardships of tour guides, and respect their personality and labor while enjoying the high-quality and high-priced service.

When discussing how to improve the overall quality of tour guides, we should also listen carefully to the suggestions of experts and scholars in tourism education and respect their opinions; Their participation is indispensable when formulating relevant laws and policies; Their cutting-edge research topics and new academic achievements should be continuously introduced into the training of tour guides, so that they can be transformed into social wealth in time.

To sum up, as long as all the people involved in tourism can realize the urgency of improving the basic quality of tour guides in China as soon as possible, realize the great significance of improving the overall quality of tour guides to promote the development of modern tourism in China, and mobilize the whole society to make joint efforts, after several years, I believe that the quality of tour guides in China will definitely be greatly improved, and the team of tour guides in China will definitely make a qualitative leap.