How to choose a tour guide when traveling abroad?

Tour guides, in the eyes of tourists, are almost the representatives and endorsements of travel agencies. A good or bad tour guide is roughly equivalent to a good or bad travel agency...

For most people For tourists, tour guides are one of the most important factors in determining the travel experience. If you have a good tour guide, it can basically be said that the trip will be more than half successful. Even if you are occasionally unlucky and encounter a little dissatisfaction, a good tour guide can help you deal with it like Xiao Shenyang'er in the Scottish style restaurant. I understand. On the contrary, if you meet a half-hearted person, and if this half-hearted person is a little more impatient in making money, you can basically conclude that the money on this trip may be wasted. As a tourist, you have to brace yourself up and be vigilant, and be ready to fight against the sky, the earth, and people at any time, so you will be blessed.

Then the question arises: Who chooses the tour guide? How was it chosen? What kind of tour guide is a good tour guide? Is it difficult to choose a tour guide?

One sentence answer: The tour guide is selected by the tour group agency. Choosing a good tour guide is not difficult.

So, what the hell is a group club? A tour group agency is the abbreviation of a travel agency responsible for organizing and arranging travel activities, which is relative to an agency travel agency. The group agency is a factory, responsible for production; the agency is a store, responsible for sales. Of course, the group company can either sell its own products through an agency, or sell directly by itself, or it can do both agency sales and direct sales at the same time. One thing that needs to be explained here is that the role division of group agency agencies is not fixed, and there is no distinction between superior and inferior. What the group companies and agencies describe are just different divisions of labor for a specific product, nothing more.

How does the tour group select the tour guide?

The selection of tour guides by tour groups is just like the selection of steel materials for automobile manufacturers and the selection of ingredients for cooking in restaurants. They are selected based on the design needs of the product and the best cost performance. In layman's terms, if a car manufacturer wants to build a flagship car that pursues all kinds of praise, then it will be willing to be careful when choosing steel materials and will never be picky; similarly, if a restaurant wants to make a signature dish, Then when choosing ingredients, you will choose carefully and not make do with things just to save money. This is also true when organizing tour groups select tour guides. If the goal of the tour group organization is to create a high-quality tourist route, then when choosing a tour guide, you must choose whichever tour guide is good, not whichever tour guide can make do or is cheap.

So, what kind of tour guide is a good tour guide?

In addition to having the correct attitude and awareness, treating tourists as guests instead of fattened sheep, and providing considerate services instead of trying to slaughter them, the most important thing for a good tour guide is their professional ability. If you don’t have professional ability, no matter how good your attitude and awareness are, it will be nothing because you will be powerless. It's like if you opened a big business and hired your second aunt who loves you the most and hasn't even graduated from elementary school to be the company's financial manager. No one would doubt the second aunt's work attitude and level of commitment to work. However, when it comes to the second aunt The actual work performance may have to be discussed separately. The same applies to choosing a tour guide. A good tour guide does not mean you are familiar with it, nor does it mean what he says that you like to hear. You still have to be professional and capable.

There are many standards for professionalism, but perhaps the most important one is to truly understand the local area. The key word here is to really understand, not to be half-hearted, nor to be just a guide who leads the way, holding up a flag and leading everyone to walk around the main streets of the scenic spots, talking about what this is and pointing out where it is. A professional tour guide must have the most fundamental understanding of the local history, culture, customs, and social structure, have considerable connections in the local area, and have certain mobilization and coordination capabilities. When explaining, he must be able to provide genuine and practical information, just in case. When something does happen, you must be able to withstand it and make peace with it.

To put it bluntly, in the actual operation of Chinese citizens traveling abroad, it is not uncommon for tour groups to use non-professional tour guides due to practical factors such as cost. For example, letting their own tour guides The tour leaders work part-time as tour guides abroad, hire overseas Chinese who live abroad and are familiar with local life to serve as tour guides, etc. There is no problem with language communication among these tour guides. They are all Chinese and all speak Chinese, but from a professional perspective, the difference may be a bit different. First of all, it is not easy for the tour guide to explain that it is not easy to come up with genuine information. It cannot be achieved by living in any country for a period of time. Just like a pure foreigner, after living in Beijing for 20 or 30 years, he can always tell a lot of stories about Beijing, whether true or false, right or wrong. When his family and friends come to Beijing from abroad, they bring them food and fun to go around and see. Not a problem. However, compared with a professional tour guide from old Beijing who grew up in a hutong, his understanding of Beijing, both in terms of depth, breadth and accuracy, may not be even the slightest bit worse. Of course it’s okay to take your family for fun, but it’s not reliable if you have to spend money to hire a tour guide in Beijing. No matter how much a blonde old Londoner boasts about the authentic taste of the old Beijing noodles she makes, I will never believe it.

Having said so much, is it difficult to choose a good tour guide with good attitude, awareness and professional ability? Let's put it this way, as long as you pay enough, it's not difficult at all.

The author once led a VIP group and spent 200 US dollars to hire an old tour guide in his 60s for 2 hours, just to ask this grandfather who grew up in the old city to explain the past and present of the old city. . Almost every household in the old city seems to be related to the old tour guide. We followed him and looked around here and there, drinking mint tea and smoking hookahs, not to mention how beautiful they were.

The old tour guide’s old neighbors are just like our own old neighbors, with warm smiles, relaxed and casual atmosphere, and great enjoyment.

This reminds me of one thing, that is, when our British inbound tour group traveled to Tibet, the foreign tour group specifically requested that we send a Tibetan tour guide. At first, we were petty, guessing that it might be the British guys’ colonial sentiment, and we also guessed that they thought the Tibetan tour guides spoke good English. In the end, we all guessed wrong. The logic behind the special request for Tibetan tour guides is actually very simple: Tibetan tour guides who grew up in Tibet know Tibet best.

Some guest officials were angry: How could they beat Deng’s anger and knock on the tomb of Mi Wei? A badger would ask if he could steal an umbrella from the window?/p>

Good riddance to you Na. We arrange foreign tour guides with very simple requirements: a foreign professional tour guide who grew up in the local area. For example, when we go to Kenya, our tour guide is a dark Kenyan who speaks Swahili. When entering the Maasai village, it feels like returning to his own home; for example, when we go to Morocco, our tour guide is a native Moroccan indigenous professional tour guide. As tourists, we don’t have to worry about accidentally offending anyone, it doesn’t happen! Our tour guide is our big brother. If the big brother can eat well, we can naturally eat well.

Friends said: Don’t brag about yourself, don’t you think the professional tour guide you used has any shortcomings? have! That's their language. They certainly don't speak Chinese as well as the Chinese. Although the Chinese they speak is more than adequate for leading a group, if you want to chat with them about a popular TV series in China, an anecdote about a Chinese star, or the latest Internet joke, their Chinese may not be enough. No more strength. But having said that, I personally estimate that not many people would spend so much money, so much time, and travel so far to talk to a Waiguo tour guide. What do you think [hehe]

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Author Weibo: The old traveler who walks around