A brief discussion on why tour guides should constantly improve their cultural accomplishments

In recent years, some scholars have proposed that "a first-class tour guide should be at the Ph.D. level." The reality is that at present, most tour guides in our country can only repeat the same tour guide words in the same way, and few tour guides can truly understand the customs, habits and cultural origins of the tourist destination. The emergence of these phenomena directly leads to tourists not being deeply impressed, let alone gaining some unforgettable travel experience. Tourists increasingly tend to pursue cultural connotations in tourism activities and want to increase knowledge, increase experience and broaden their horizons through tourism. Cultural tourism has become an important way in tourism. In addition to relaxing their mood and cultivating their sentiments, people’s travels , also want to increase knowledge, expand experience, and obtain spiritual benefits through tourism. Throughout the tour, tourists can gain certain knowledge through tour guide explanations and daily conversations with tour guides. Practice has also proved that tour guides’ explanations and daily conversations are the main source of knowledge for tourists, especially group tourists. In order to adapt to the growing spiritual and cultural needs of tourists, as a tour guide, we need to improve our own cultural accomplishment in order to provide the best service to tourists and better demonstrate our style and taste. If a person does not know much about the culture of his own region, it is difficult to imagine how he can better introduce our scenic spot culture to tourists from other places, nor can he have enough confidence to deal with various problems of tourists. Tour guides must constantly improve their cultural knowledge and become a tour guide with high cultural accomplishment.

1. The cultural literacy of a tour guide is an important factor that affects the difference in the level of group leadership

A good tour guide’s explanation quality and service quality are very important, but I think the cultural quality of a tour guide Literacy is more important. It determines the quality of tour guide service and is an important factor for tour guides to improve their tour guide level. As a tour guide, it is absolutely impossible not to have a certain cultural connotation. No matter how good our service is and how eloquent we are, we will still receive complaints from tourists in the end. What is the reason? Suppose a tourist encounters a person with relatively low cultural accomplishment. A tour guide with low standards is full of nonsense. If we were tourists, would we be dissatisfied and complain? People often say: "The beauty of the motherland's mountains and rivers all depends on the tour guide's mouth." The "mouth" mentioned here "", some people may misunderstand that it is easy to be a tour guide. As long as you are articulate, you can make up random things and deceive tourists. In fact, it is not the case. The "mouth" we are talking about is to guide tour guides in the process of leading tours. The explanations and introductions must be based on historical facts, plus the beautiful legends of the place, so that tourists can be convinced. This requires tour guides to accumulate more knowledge of history, geography and literature, thereby improving their own cultural literacy.

Tour guides should not only satisfy tourists’ travel purposes of seeking novelty, beauty, and fun, but also help them increase their knowledge and gain lessons while having fun. Practice has proven that tour guides’ explanations and daily conversations are the main source, or even the only source, of knowledge for tourists, especially group tourists. Therefore, tourists have high expectations for tour guides. They hope that their tour guide will be a "jack of all trades" who knows everything and a "tour guide artist" who knows everything. The land of China is like a scroll, and the journey of thousands of miles is like an examination room. All these show that no matter which aspect or place it is, it is a severe test for the cultural quality of tour guides.

2. Cultural literacy is the prerequisite and necessary condition for tour guide service

More and more people realize that tour guide service is a knowledge-intensive and highly intelligent art service. It's no longer a simple nanny-type service job. As far as tour guide services are concerned, explanation is the main service content. Our tour guide explains that if you want to be the highlight of an unforgettable travel experience for tourists, it must be backed by profound knowledge, it must be meaningful, and it must have real content; it must be based on feelings rather than making excuses; it must be realistic and not fabricated. . That is to say, tour guides are required to have real talents and practical knowledge, have a broad range of knowledge, rich or complex content, and must be able to integrate it comprehensively. That is to say, the explanation must be backed by profound knowledge, so that it can be rich in content and meaningful.

So, what does the higher cultural literacy of tour guides include?

The book "Tour Guide Business" compiled by the National Tourism Administration in 1990 pointed out: "A certain amount of cultural knowledge , is the minimum requirement for a tour guide. First of all, it is a need for the tour guide industry, because the tour guide has a wide range of contacts: from astronomy to geography, especially Chinese and foreign history, geography, politics, economics, etc. You need to know something about culture, architecture, art, religion, aesthetics, psychology, law, and folk customs, so some people say that "tour guides should first be knowledgeable and knowledgeable." Tour guides must be knowledgeable because of their hospitality. The targets are not single: ranging from retired presidents and conferences to working baggage handlers; there are upper-class people with a gentlemanly style, as well as housewives who devote themselves to housework. The status, class, occupation, age, interests, hobbies, living habits, and national character of the tourists we receive are all very different. Without rich knowledge, it is difficult to receive good guests. ”

Let’s make a brief summary of the specific knowledge that tour guides need to master:

1. Knowledge of language and literature

The ancients said: “The desire to work well is to To do this, you must first sharpen your tools. "Tour guides rely on their mouths to make a living, and the "tool" they need to be "smart" is excellent language expression skills and solid language skills.

Tour guides with strong language and literature skills will explain things naturally, fluently, euphemistically and attractively.

2. Psychology and aesthetic knowledge

Tour guides mainly work with all kinds of tourists, and they also have to deal with staff of various tourism service departments. The three members of the tour guide work group The relationship between the escorts, the guide and the team leader is sometimes complicated. Tour guides work as human beings, and they often get along with them for a short time, so it is of special importance to master the necessary psychological knowledge. Tour guides should keep abreast of tourists' psychological activities at any time, provide targeted tour guide explanations and travel life services, and provide targeted psychological services so that they can be psychologically satisfied and enjoy spiritually. Facts have proved that providing more psychological services to tourists is far more important than functional services.

Tourism is a comprehensive aesthetic activity. The responsibility of tour guides is not only to disseminate knowledge to tourists, but also to deliver beautiful information so that they can enjoy beauty. A qualified tour guide must understand what beauty is and where it lies, and be good at using vivid and vivid language to introduce beauty to tourists with different aesthetic tastes. He must also use aesthetic knowledge to guide his own appearance and deportment, because tour guides Members represent the country (region) and themselves are the aesthetic objects of tourists.

3. Historical, geographical and cultural knowledge

Historical, geographical and cultural knowledge includes knowledge of history, geography, religion, ethnicity, customs, specialties, literature and art, ancient buildings and gardens, etc. . Tour guides should study hard and strive to make themselves knowledgeable about astronomy and geography, and have a thorough understanding of the tourist attractions, customs, historical anecdotes, folklore, etc. of the local and neighboring provinces, cities, and regions. They should also be familiar with major domestic and foreign scenic spots. To understand something, you must also be good at organically linking local scenic spots with historical allusions, literary masterpieces, celebrity anecdotes, etc.

The lack of historical, geographical and cultural knowledge is another common and serious problem among our country’s tour guides: (1) Some tour guides have mediocre knowledge and can only memorize some tour guide words and repeat what they read, like monks reciting sutras. , bland; the more serious ones are "all diseases are the same, all are treated equally". Regardless of the different types of tourists, there is only one kind of explanation by the tour guide; (2) Some tour guides only use boring and dry language. , a few dull numbers introduce tourist attractions, making the listeners drowsy, listless, and confused; (3) Many tour guides have only half-knowledge of the attractions they introduce, and they often explain in a few words and perfunctoryly. It plays the role of guiding the way and replacing simple explanation boards at tourist spots. It often fails to answer tourists’ questions, which makes them embarrassed and tourists unhappy; (4) An important task of tour guides is to spread Chinese culture through tour guide explanations, and the content of explanations must be It is well-founded and should be the essence. However, some tour guides do not seek to make progress in a down-to-earth manner, but to walk in. There are crooked ways in which the tour guides may substitute "fiction" for reality when explaining things, or they may be rhetorical, empty, and grandstanding. What's worse, they actually fabricate historical facts, pretend to be pretentious, talk nonsense, and deceive tourists. This kind of behavior is not allowed by the professional ethics of tour guides. In my opinion, the most serious problem currently existing is that many tour guides have too narrow knowledge and only seek a smattering of knowledge. This will seriously affect the further improvement of my country's tour guide service level and is not conducive to the development of China's tourism industry. Therefore, tour guides must constantly improve their knowledge in this area.