Tour guides work in the tourism industry, guiding groups of visitors and individuals. Tour guides are experts not only in the area of history of a place, region but also know local customs and curiosities. Tour guides offer their clients interesting, interesting and informative information about the city, historical events, natural attractions, historical places, museums, sightseeing places and other travel destinations. Tour guides can lead walking tours, bus tours, and even lead riverboat tours. Often hired by travel agencies or tour companies, tour guides are usually residents of the region in which they are guiding tours.

Ready to take the next step?

Tour guides told us they needed a web portal to promote their services. That's how odyseos.com was created. A portal where tourists can directly communicate with local tour guides. People who live in the city where they are offering their services.

Tour guides and their services

Tour guides guide groups of visitors or individuals.

The duties of tour guides depend on where they live and their employer. If they are self-employed, they usually guide tours of tourist sites, cities, museums, sports facilities, national parks or natural attractions. Tour guides who are employed by a travel agency or corporation offer tours of cities, industrial sites or other points of interest. The three main areas of specialization in the tour guide industry are:

History tour guides lead groups of visitors to national monuments, historical sites, historic districts, religious or archaeological sites, and museums. Tour guides are well versed and have extensive knowledge of the history of places, monuments, and events that took place. Local Tour guides offer visitors an interesting description of the place, including its history and the impact it has had on modern society. In addition, they answer visitors' questions and manage the organized tour safely and according to the tour plan.

Local tour guides can be hired by large, international companies, which are usually well-known corporations although non-profit organizations often need guides as well. Local tour guides take groups through factories, describing the production process, history and mission of the company. Amusement parks often employ local tour guides to take visitors through a museum located within the park that documents the history of the company's accomplishments. Local tour guides may also work in zoos, wildlife refuges, safari parks, or animal reserves, informing visitors about animal behavior and the company's goals.

Local wildlife tour guides lead groups through natural attractions, national parks, and other outdoor locations where wildlife and scenic spots are the primary focus of the tour. Local tour guides are experts in the natural sciences and have the ability to engage visitors with their knowledge of the biology, geology and history of a place. An increasingly popular area of the industry is environmental tours. The goal of local eco-tour guides is to lead a group of people to an often protected but scenic natural area with little or no environmental impact. Visitors are offered knowledge about the impact of human activities on the environment, and local Tour guides seek to foster a general appreciation for the natural environment.

Regardless of a tour guide's specialty, some basic responsibilities apply to all positions. Their primary responsibility is to make sure that the tour is as safe as possible for the entire group. They will monitor the group's activities to make sure that everyone is following the safety regulations of the site or guide. In some cases, they may need to provide first aid or emergency assistance to visitors. Local tour guides usually plan itineraries, as well as organize every step of the visitor service process from greeting visitors upon arrival to arranging transportation between sites. Sometimes local Tour guides are also required to perform clerical duties, collect fees, and in many cases, promote gift stores and sell souvenirs.

Local tour guides

Tour guides know how to work independently. They tend to be social people, which means they are polite, generous, cooperative, patient, caring, helpful, empathetic, tactful, and friendly. They excel at socializing, helping others, sharing knowledge and teaching. Some are also entrepreneurial, which means they are adventurous, ambitious, assertive, extroverted, energetic, enthusiastic, confident and optimistic.

Who are local tour guides?

Local Tour guides work in the tourism industry, guiding groups of visitors. They are experts in the history of a place and offer their groups interesting or informative information about points of interest at natural attractions, historical sites, museums, scenic spots and other travel destinations. Local tour guides can lead walking tours, bus tours, and even lead riverboat tours. Often hired by travel agencies or tour companies, local tour guides are usually residents of the region in which they are guiding tours.

Local Tour guides, what is the demand for their services?

When most people hear the term 'tour guides', they usually think of guides who show travelers around places of interest, either in one city or country or in multiple locations as part of a longer tour. The fact is, however, that local tour guides are employed in this field, and the demand for and employability of those employed in each sector varies depending on a number of factors.

Certainly, the job prospects for local Tour guides who guide tourists to museums, galleries and religious sites depend on the number of tourists. Local Tour guides must be able to know facts, figures and events and be able to convey them in a convincing manner. These tour guides, who accompany groups on itineraries that span multiple cities or countries, are responsible for almost every detail of the tour and must have organizational skills and the ability to understand different cultures.

In many European countries, local tour guides must pass rigorous exams and obtain a license to practice. In the United States, there are few regulations for tour guides and they are usually not required to obtain a license. Regardless of where local tour guides work, knowledge of local history and attractions, communication skills, comfort with public speaking, and knowledge of more than one language are definite assets for advancement in this profession.

Experience in theater or entertainment or experience in teaching will also increase a candidate's chances of being hired. Tour guides who work with corporations suffer from misnomers. They are not tour guides. They are "tour directors" or "travel directors" or "tour directors," and their duties are very different from those of traditional tour guides.

Tour guides, a passion and a profession

Tour guides sometimes act as traveling concierges who cater to the needs of corporate incentive tour participants. Aspiring tour guides must be prepared for very long days, multiple changes to pre-planned programs, and often unexpected requests and demands from guests who, in most cases, have won their tours in exchange for achieving sales or management goals. Because tour guides sometimes travel to and from destinations with their groups, they are more likely to succeed if they have additional skills in airline reservations and ticketing procedures, as well as foreign language skills. High energy levels, the ability to think creatively, and a willingness to problem-solve are essential to success in this role.

The first step to choosing a profession is to make sure that you are actually willing to commit to working very different hours. You do not want to waste your time doing something you are not passionate about.

Still not sure if becoming a tour guide suits you? Ask other people. You can find many people who are tour guides on the tour guide portal odyseos.com. Maybe also in your city or area. Get in touch with them. Talk about what their job is like.

How do you become a tour guide?

In most cases, you don't need a high school diploma or equivalent certificate. Sometimes a college degree is required, which varies from company to company, but often a bachelor's degree in a tourism-related field is necessary. Museum guides, for example, usually have a background in history, and environmental tour guides often specialize in conservation or environmental education. In most cases, local tour guides provide on-the-job education that includes safety training.

Most importantly, local tour guides must be experts in their field. They must be able to answer specific questions about places, their history, and their amenities. Effective communication skills are absolutely essential to a successful career in the tourism industry. In addition, tour guides must be highly organized, punctual and ethical. They must have exceptional time management skills and be able to thoroughly research relevant information. The ability to speak multiple languages, while not essential, is an asset for many tour guides.

Tour guides are sociable and entrepreneurial

Local Tour guides tend to be social people, which means that they feel comfortable in situations where they can interact with, persuade, or help people. They also tend to be entrepreneurial, which means they are usually natural leaders who can influence others and convince them of their reasons, proposals.

If you are one or both of these archetypes, you may be well suited to the role of a tour guide. However, if you are not very creative, and especially don't like working under uncertainty, this is probably not the career for you.

Private guided tours are a whole new way to travel when it comes to using travel services!

It is a modern and very convenient way of exploring cities, getting to know their attractions.

Using a local private tour guide allows you to customize your itinerary, so you can visit the wonderful hidden gems of the world while traveling in comfort. A private tour guide is not just a travel guide. Private tour guides become your new temporary friends who are there to make you feel as if you have been to a particular city many times before and visit once again, old familiar places to fully discover their atmosphere and vibe once again.

The Tour guide Portal is the answer to the needs of local tour guides who want to present their guiding services in as many places as possible on the Internet, and tourists who want to have a choice, the ability to read in one place the offers of private Tour guide, without having to scan the Internet.

With the advent of the Internet, private tour guides around the world have quickly adopted the new technology. Local tour guide websites have become their image in the eyes of tourists, a way to attract new tourists, customers who want to explore cities and regions individually and in groups to experience more on their vacations. With this came the emergence of Tour guide portals, which soon became an essential part of the tourism ecosystem. The huge demand for Tour guide portals is fulfilled by content management system development services.

Tour guide portal, what it is

A Tour guide portal, is a directory, a website that serves to showcase the many, various travel offerings of private Tour guides. A Tour guide portal provides access to various modules, extensions, micro-applications as well as information available through the internet in a much easier way. Due to the fact that a private tour guide, wants to promote his tour guide services on the internet, have his own tour service offer, entry in the portal, the portal makes this possible in a maximum easy, simple and fast way. Just as a well-designed website can easily promote the tour guide services, offer services and support its online promotion goals to all customers.

A Tour guide portal generates more traffic than, a dedicated Tour guide website. This is due to the significant difference in the number of articles. If a single Tour guide website sometimes has a few to several dozen subpages with articles, a Tour guide portal has thousands and tens of thousands of them. Each advertisement of a private Tour guide is a separate webpage. Tour guide portal supports sales of tour guide services, is an element of tour guides online marketing strategy, promotes positive image of tour guides environment. The Tour guide portal provides benefits for tourists, customers who can explore the offers of many, different private Tour guides in one place.

Hence, the question that arises is how a local Tour guide can use a Tour guide portal? The answer will explain the importance of Tour guide portal in promoting the services of local Tour guides.

Tour guide portal

A private tour guide offering Polish tours has a website and increasingly a social media profile. Local Tour guide develop their websites with individual look and feel. Modern websites use popular content management systems. Local Tour guide create content and publish it in an attractive way dal tourists.

Having an entry in the Tour guide portal provides additional opportunities for the development of online sales of local Tour guide services. It facilitates management of customer inquiries, being a part of tour guide community, publishing articles, calendar management, online payment management.

Tour guide portal enables user interaction

With the growing popularity of social media, local tour guides have the ability to easily interact with tourists, their customers in a very effective way by directly answering their numerous queries. In addition, tourists are much more interested in interacting directly with tour guides to arrange tour details in Polish. Tourists, before working with a local tour guide gain knowledge about their services from various sources including portals, social media, websites, blogs. Moreover, Tour guide portal can be the best source that educates tourists in the most effective way because it contains a very wide offer of many private Tour guide, tourist offices, descriptions of cities and regions attractions.

Tour guide portal builds recognition of Tour guide

You are a Tour guide. You know very well that nowadays tourists look for Tour guide only on the Internet, social media and on the recommendation of their friends. You have your profile on Facebook, Instagram, you have a website, you run a channel on YouTube. Tourists come to you because you have a well-known name and the city where you are a local tour guide attracts a lot of customers.

You know that the internet has become the main platform through which you get tourists - clients. Any tour guide can easily establish a relationship with tourists and even get to know, network and compare with competitors in a much more effective way than by browsing through individual tour guide websites.

Tour guide portal enables better integration of applications

One of the important goals of a Tour guide portal is to provide a single point of access for other business applications. Hence, a Tour guide portal has numerous integration tools, development services, latest technologies for integrating the portal with applications. Moreover, most of the portals are integrated and mainly focus on tourists in a fairly simple way. Tour guide portals have a unique integration process that allows you to get information about tour guide services with ease.

A tour guide portal enables you to create a common platform for collaboration

To access different information systems, the Tour guide portal offers one kind of common platform to be used in a fairly simple way. Although, there are very many, different Tour guides who use the portal, the platform is one.

A Tour guide portal offers a unique opportunity to explore the offerings of Tour guides promoting their services in a selected city, region or country. It allows you to make quick acquaintance with other local Tour guide. It is useful for creating a source system for a wide range of web portals.

The tour guide portal enables you to create dedicated subpages

Basically, there are many ways to promote the services of Tour guide. A Tour guide portal provides one such opportunity. Having your business card, offer on a travel portal alongside other private Tour guides increases trust in the Tour guide.

A Tour guide portal allows you to offer a wide range of features to suit the expectations of tourists conditions and business norms. Tour guide portal often offers extremely fast way to provide additional features useful for tour guides like appointment setting, chat, online payment, managing calendar and service availability, promoting tour guide services.

Tour guide portal allows you to create personal, customized offers for tourists

Tour guide portal allows you to offer better personalization and even customize various tools to create tourist offers with great ease. Hence, the portal invites local Tour guide to create their profile for free.

The Tour guide portal offers the possibility to present your own offer of tourist services included in a single template. It offers simple, intuitive and user-friendly features for adding ads, editing, promoting and presenting them. There are many local Tour guide who are eager to use the possibilities offered by the portal.

Tour guide portal enables interaction

Significant benefits of developing a Tour guide portal exist in the domain area. , and a good web portal developer makes sure that they are designed for different domains. This kind of web portals eventually becomes the entry to various clients, along with similar companies that exist in the industry. Hence, making as well as using a domain specific portal is certainly a big benefit for any web development company that designs a portal.

A tour guide portal enables you to acquire new customers

Customer acquisition, brand promotion is perhaps the most important function of a Tour guide portal. Every private tour guide needs tourists. Tourists who want to use the services of a private tour guide and are willing to pay a certain rate for this service.

Nowadays, big travel companies promote their services of local Tour guides. Of the value that the tourist pays, the local Tour guide receive only a portion. Private tour guide agree to this solution because their websites, social media profiles are not able to break through to the high position on the query in the search results of web browsers.

High ranking in search results for private tour guide services is offered by Tour Guide Portal. Tour guide portal has hundreds and thousands of listings, advertisements of local tour guide. From this it draws strength and power. It is the number of advertisements, tour descriptions and local attractions that allows private Tour guides offer to be presented in high positions of web browsers. Hence, a Tour guide portal, with an advertisement of a private Tour guide offers the opportunity to attract tourists. It offers more customers, visitors and consequently increases the sales and profits of the private tour guide.

The tour guide portal enables you to increase the confidence in the Tour guide's offerings

The development of the Tour guide portal achieves a trusted and professional look. For example, it loads quite fast and is very SEO friendly. Moreover, the Tour guides portal works for private Tour guides to promote their offerings.

Tour guide portal, summary

The growth of internet, social networking and tourism contributes to the emergence of new places on the internet, portals. A tour guide portal can help a private tour guide in various ways. It improves the online presence of the tour guide and promotes the tour guide services. It provides necessary support for customer queries and helps in achieving tourist satisfaction.

Tour guide portal helps the interaction between guides and tourists. It also provides a professional look to the guide offerings. Hence, when it comes to the business benefits of a Tour guide portal, there are many of them, some of which are mentioned above.

Use tour guide portal to grow your business, get new profitable customers.

We all love to see clients open their eyes in surprise or interest at what you say, the way you say it, the way you know how to engage attention. People's eyes are opened when they learn something new. If you don't like boring people, you need to find a way to convey interesting facts without putting people to sleep. Here are some ideas that will make people love you as a local tour guide and your team:

A local tour guide is interested in tourists

Get to know tourists by having at least a brief chat with them. Find out where they are from and how they like the city and region they are in.

It is simple, small gestures like this that give a sense of value that tourists will take away from your English tour. Being friendly is key, and personal attention builds on that foundation, making tourists feel special.

See if you can find a way to get tourists to interact with you while you are guiding tours in English instead of just listening.

A local tour guide knows how to tell interesting stories

When tourists are overloaded with information, they start begging for the end. The exact year a major event took place is nothing compared to why and how it happened. Find interesting tidbits and weave the information into a story. Get tourists to get into the scenario you are building and and here's the key really get a feel for how people live or lived in a particular environment, situation. If these are nature tours in English, you can still build a narrative. There's a story everywhere. With the help of our tour guide portal, Odyseos.com describe stories that encourage tourists to choose your services.

The fact that a building was once important does not necessarily make it important now. It is the human perspective of the building that tourists find most exciting, or how the building relates to them. For example, with a group of tourists from Germany, you might show them places in your city that have historical connections to their Germany.

A local tour guide has a sense of humor

You don't have to be a jokester, but an occasional sense of humor certainly comes in handy. Think about it: people love to laugh. Give them what they love, and they'll appreciate you for it.

It's not about writing a million jokes. Find appealing and crazy stories, develop them and focus on them. Find contradictions that can be funny.

The local tour guide has an imagination

Encourage your tourists to close their eyes and listen to your voice as you tell the story of the place and issues. Ask them to feel the emotions of your characters. If you are talking about history, you can create an example character to tell how someone would have lived in those times.

As you explore each place, show how your historical character participated in the life of that place and how it affected society as a whole. You can even create several characters, one upper class, one middle class, and one lower class. Use this to show how each of them interacted with the same place, but in dramatically different ways.

The best guides are those who help you see something in a complete new light. Be that person.

A local tour guide knows how to add something from themselves, the little touches

It's the little touches that people remember and differentiate you from a regular tour guide.

Bring umbrellas, free cold water or free snacks. This will show that you are a real person who cares about your tourists, not just the amount of your tour rate.

Even if you put giant ads on your website and in your office with a sign saying tourists must have their own umbrellas, there will always be those who forget. Be prepared for people's mistakes and things they forget, and they will thank you for it.

Another small touch is to provide a small information brochure at the beginning of the tour in English so tourists can keep track of what is going on. So they can plan their day, see what's going to happen.

It's all about being human and doing things with love. If you ask yourself the question of How to organize a tour in English? all these ideas will come naturally, on their own.

A local tour guide knows how to adapt to the needs and expectations of tourists

The best tours in English are the ones where the local tour guide can find points of interest to show each tourist so they can connect on a personal level.

Treat your children as your most important tourists. If you have kids, you definitely know what it's like to travel with them. Sunshine, happiness and smiles 100% of the time, right? Get used to parent tourists quickly by taking care of the kids. Play sets, snack packs or even a free bottle of water makes a difference.

If your English tours are kid-friendly, make sure to emphasize that in your tour descriptions. Show children in the pictures you have on your website so tourists understand that you can cater to families. Even something that you think is obvious to kids may not be so obvious to your tourists.

In private trips the excursion is built on the request of the tourist: you order a tour for a few hours or a set of services for the duration of your stay. Guide on a private car can meet guests at the airport or train station, recommend a cafe and a hotel.

Individual tours is a modern, very interesting and advantageous option of excursions, they can be varied, it all depends on the budget and your wishes.

Advantages of traveling with private guides

Private tour guide can save your money

Comfort, safety, economy of your time is worth the money spent, because no one cancels the proverb that the miser pays twice.

On excursions in a large group people often have to overpay, because at commercial stops tourists are brought to stores and cafes with inflated prices.

Individual guide will suggest budget places and the best spots for shopping, where you can save money.

In the case when you go on an author tour with a group of friends and acquaintances, you can share its cost for all, and also can win in price.

Private tour guide can save your time

On vacation everyone wants to have time to do many things at once: to sunbathe, to wander through unfamiliar towns, to try exotic foods and buy souvenirs for your family.

What happens on trips with a large tour group? Most of the time is spent on solving logistical problems: to get everyone together, etc. Add to this long stops for people to go to the toilet or have a snack, buy souvenirs and food, as well as the time to get on and off the bus.

Individual trips are arranged so that you can get to the most interesting places quickly, without traffic jams and queues.

Your guide knows the best time to visit the sights, to avoid crowds. As a result, precious time is spent effectively, the trip becomes richer and brighter, you have time to see, taste and feel a lot.

Undoubted advantage of private tours — personal transportation, many guides offer such service. When you travel on a private car you will stop where the big bus just can not fit or at the place you want to go. You can safely take photos and videos — spend as much time as you need and choose the desired angle.

Private tour guide can give your unique itinerary and individual approach

There is no exclusivity in excursions that are available to large tour groups — they are built for the average traveler, the goal is to see everything quickly in a short time.

On individual trips, the itinerary is tailored to personal interests, and can be adjusted even during the trip — perhaps in some place you will want to stay longer and learn more about the attraction, or vice versa — to miss something. All this is possible to organize!

When a crowd of listeners gathers around the guide, there is a chance that you will not hear something, be embarrassed to say or will not have time to ask your question.

The advantages of a private guide — he will answer your questions and additionally on the way will tell a lot of interesting things about modern life of people, fascinating and little-known household subtleties, curious details about the sights and much more.

On individual tours you are fully immersed in the atmosphere of unfamiliar cities and countries, you get sincere positive emotions from the feeling of belonging to a new place and getting original knowledge.

Private tour guide can offer your trim with comfortable number of participants

On trips from agencies, the number of tourists is large — often several dozen people. In such tours it is practically impossible to relax. Kids get tired and begin to be capricious, the guide speaks too quietly, it is hot inside the bus or, on the contrary, the air conditioning is too cold.

Individual guides offer a comfortable travel experience. The guide is nearby and can be heard perfectly, you can talk to him and ask questions.

A small group of like-minded people rides with you, and the private vehicle is set to the right temperature and music.

Private tour guide can offer your safety

Private guides often become assistants, and help tourists when it is dangerous to travel around the country without a companion (unstable political and economic situation), the routes are not well developed or an unforeseen situation has arisen.

You can find private guides on numerous websites, today there are many services offering individual excursions and tailor-made tours around the world.

You can use Odyseos.com to find your local tour guide who will make your trip interesting and comfortable.