Coming Up on Your Left : A Tour Guide's Guidebook by Wilson Joemy

Author:Wilson, Joemy [Wilson, Joemy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: JourneyWoman Press
Published: 2013-10-25T00:00:00+00:00

City Tour Practical Stuff

Now we come to the nuts and bolts of a city tour: the Practical Stuff. Some of the following information you will receive from whoever has hired you, some from the tour director, if there is one, and some from your own research.

Schedule: How long is the tour? Three to four hours is typical for a half-day city tour, but it could be ninety minutes or less, or a full day.

Routing: Where do you start and where do you end? A city tour can begin anywhere – from the airport, a cruise ship terminal, or whatever hotel your clients are staying in. Be prepared with your commentary accordingly. For example, when my L.A. city tour begins at the Roosevelt Hotel, in the heart of Hollywood and legendary site of the first Academy Awards ceremony, I start talking movies and pointing out Tinseltown landmarks immediately. When the group is staying in Pasadena for the Rose Bowl, it’s about twenty-five minutes on the freeway from the hotel to Hollywood, so I’m free to begin the tour in a more general way.

A tour often ends back at its starting point, but sometimes it doesn’t. If you’ve left your car there and need to get back to it, the company should reimburse expenses for your cab fare or whatever arrangements you need to make to be reunited with your vehicle. Sometimes the coach driver can take you back.

Is anything happening that might affect your planned route, such as road closures, construction, a parade, a demonstration, a holiday, a festival, a film shoot? Be sure your routing is legal and safe as well as interesting, and adjust your timing if you expect delays due to any of these factors. Avoid backtracking whenever possible.

Itinerary : What’s included? If the tour brochure has promised the clients that they will “see” something, you must at least drive by it. If they have been told they will “visit,” then you will get off the coach and go into the place.

On my first trip to Riga, Latvia, I took a Jewish Heritage tour that the American travel company I worked for was interested in offering the following year. In town, the group visited the active synagogue, the ruins of a Great Choral Synagogue, and a small museum. Then we drove for about half an hour to Rumbala Forest, where we were supposed to visit a Holocaust memorial dedicated to the 25,000 Latvian Jews who were massacred there. Imagine my astonishment when, upon reaching a large sculpture that marks the entrance to the forest, I heard the guide tell the driver, “All right, they’ve seen it, now turn around and go back to the city. I’ve got another group at 5:00 o’clock.”

Needless to say, I didn’t recommend him to my company. The group saw Rumbala Forest and the entrance to it, yes, but we were supposed to visit the entire site .

The following year we used our own handpicked guide, and you can be sure that all my groups walked into the memorial.

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