Travel plan idea blog

So, you want to be a tour guide?

Hi everyone. Please welcome Mike Richardson to the blog. Mike is a tour guide based in Munich and my wife and I were lucky enough to meet him when we went to Salzburg. He has kindly agreed to share some of his travel knowledge and experience with us! Here is his first article:

So, you want to be a tour guide?

Well, tour guiding can be a great job and I completely understand why you would want to do it. I’ve been a tour guide for four years now and sort of fell into it myself.

Quite often I am asked by people on my tours how they could go about being a tour guide. Nearly every time they want to do it as a student job or just for one summer. Don’t get me wrong, there are tour companies that do hire for one summer and there are also tour companies who hire students; however I would not recommend working for them.

In major cities in Europe you have many options as far as tour companies. In most cases these companies range from:
1.) a couple of guys working under the radar of the law trying to make money and pay no taxes.
2.) Companies where their average clients are staying at the Hilton and they need to be air conditioned at all times.

Usually the companies that hire seasonal employees or students are at the very low end of the spectrum and aim at backpackers. Typically they will offer tours far under market value and pay their employees either (literally) nothing or very little, requiring the tour guides to beg for tips to somehow earn a living.

The majority of non-backpackers are not willing to take those tours, so go with a more reputable tour company, possibly one recommended by the local tourist information office. These companies are the ones you had in mind when you thought to yourself that you’d like to be a tour guide. If you want to be a tour guide for one of these companies, typically you should have at least a bachelor’s degree, have lived in that area for at least a year, and know a good amount of the history of the area before you go in for an interview.

If neither of those options seems to fit what you had in mind, one option might be to work in promotion for a tour company. Most of the companies hire at least one or two people (sometimes a lot more) to distribute their brochures and promote their tours around town while the office employees and the actual guides are too busy. Although this isn’t as glamorous an idea and doesn’t pay that well, it can still be a lot of fun and better pay than being a guide for “free tours” as an example.

-Mike Richardson, the professional tourist

Posted by James Trotta at March 21, 2008 12:18 PM | TrackBack