Example Career: Travel Guides

Career Description

Plan, organize, and conduct long distance travel, tours, and expeditions for individuals and groups.

What Job Titles Travel Guides Might Have

• Guide
• Tour Director
• Tour Escort
• Tour Manager

What Travel Guides Do

• Plan tour itineraries, applying knowledge of travel routes and destination sites.
• Resolve any problems with itineraries, service, or accommodations.
• Sell travel packages.
• Arrange for tour or expedition details such as accommodations, transportation, equipment, and the availability of medical personnel.
• Evaluate services received on the tour, and report findings to tour organizers.
• Lead individuals or groups to tour site locations and describe points of interest.
• Verify amounts and quality of equipment prior to expeditions or tours.
• Pay bills and record checks issued.
• Attend to special needs of tour participants.
• Give advice on sightseeing and shopping.
• Provide tourists with assistance in obtaining permits and documents such as visas, passports, and health certificates, and in converting currency.
• Administer first aid to injured group participants.
• Pilot airplanes or drive land and water vehicles to transport tourists to activity or tour sites.
• Set up camps, and prepare meals for tour group members.
• Instruct novices in climbing techniques, mountaineering, and wilderness survival, and demonstrate use of hunting, fishing, and climbing equipment.

What Travel Guides Should Be Good At

• Oral Comprehension - The ability to listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences.
• Speech Recognition - The ability to identify and understand the speech of another person.
• Speech Clarity - The ability to speak clearly so others can understand you.
• Oral Expression - The ability to communicate information and ideas in speaking so others will understand.
• Written Comprehension - The ability to read and understand information and ideas presented in writing.

What Travel Guides Should Be Interested In

• Enterprising - Enterprising occupations frequently involve starting up and carrying out projects. These occupations can involve leading people and making many decisions. Sometimes they require risk taking and often deal with business.
• Conventional - Conventional occupations frequently involve following set procedures and routines. These occupations can include working with data and details more than with ideas. Usually there is a clear line of authority to follow.

What Travel Guides Need to Learn

• Sales and Marketing - Knowledge of principles and methods for showing, promoting, and selling products or services. This includes marketing strategy and tactics, product demonstration, sales techniques, and sales control systems.
• Customer and Personal Service - Knowledge of principles and processes for providing customer and personal services. This includes customer needs assessment, meeting quality standards for services, and evaluation of customer satisfaction.
• Geography - Knowledge of principles and methods for describing the features of land, sea, and air masses, including their physical characteristics, locations, interrelationships, and distribution of plant, animal, and human life.
• Clerical - Knowledge of administrative and clerical procedures and systems such as word processing, managing files and records, stenography and transcription, designing forms, and other office procedures and terminology.
• Administration and Management - Knowledge of business and management principles involved in strategic planning, resource allocation, human resources modeling, leadership technique, production methods, and coordination of people and resources.
• Transportation - Knowledge of principles and methods for moving people or goods by air, rail, sea, or road, including the relative costs and benefits.
• English Language - Knowledge of the structure and content of the English language including the meaning and spelling of words, rules of composition, and grammar.