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Start your training with Kelsey. In this page, Kelsey will teach you some key points about guiding not in a boring regular way, but in his fun way of teaching. With the help of this training you can make your tours more enjoyable and make travelers have memorable experiences.
Don't forget to comment your own tricks and ideas about being a better guddy under the videos.
Kelsey Tonner helps tour guides all over the world create, sell and market their experiences - plus provide coaching on delivering extraordinary service. With over ten years experience in the industry he has led trips in over fifteen different countries from Europe to the Americas and from Asia to North Africa. In 2015 Kelsey was chosen from thousands as one of eight shortlisted guides for the Wanderlust World Guide Awards.
He is the founder of The Be a Better Guide Project (www.beabetterguide.com) which brings the world's top tour leaders and tourism businesses together to learn from one another, share best practices, and build an online community. With practical yet wisecracking advice, Kelsey inspires a global community of professional tour leaders and businesses to give people memories of a lifetime, and helps them earn more money while doing it. Read more: http://www.beabetterguide.com/about/
Keeping the attention of the traveler is one of your biggest challenges as a guddy. On any given tour the guddy is doing the majority of the speaking, and so it is especially important to think of creative ways to get your audience to participate. You should never treat your tour like a lecture and even the most powerful and interesting tour guides on the planet, will always benefit by having some interactivity and group participation. In this week’s tour guide training, These insights come from a tour leader in the Netherlands, a nature walk on the Galapagos, and a beetle-chewing, seventy year old in a cultural centre in rural Vietnam. We fully love the idea of guddies coming together from every corner of the globe and sharing their best practices. After watching the video, share your most memorable tour experiences in the comments below, so we can all get better at creating, fun interactive tours!
The worst bad habits are the ones that we don’t even realize we are doing. Here are four bad habits that can really get in the way of a great tour. Avoid from them to make your tours greater!
Stories are the way that humans have communicated for hundreds and thousands of years. Effective speakers use stories to connect with their audiences and deliver their messages in powerful ways. Business schools around the world use ‘case studies’ and stories as teaching tools and to help students tease out lessons out of real life situations. There is no question, that as tour guides, we should hone and develop our storytelling skills. While many think that you need some ‘natural ability’ or that some people are just born great story tellers - join me in believing that ANYONE can become an incredible storyteller. By following the tips outlined the above video, practicing and studying the great storytellers in your life - you will be able to captivate audiences and keep people hanging off your every word! Not only will this make you a more interesting and effective guide, it will help you in a multitude of ways outside of your career.
Being funny is one of those traits that many incredible guddies seem to share. You don’t have to be funny to be a great guddy, but a well placed joke or a good hearted jab can really make your tour a lot more fun. People love laughing, being surprised and hearing about absurd people and places. A great tour is ultimately a form of entertainment and it is worth it to try and figure out how you can incorporate humour into your experience. Luckily, there are lots of ways to be funny, but unfortunately, there is nothing less funny than someone trying too hard to tell jokes.
Let’s face it, no matter which part of the world we work in – all of us guides need to be comfortable talking to people we’ve just met. For many, this is an especially challenging part of the job and one that takes a lot of practice to improve.
There are few things quite so embarrassing as being publicly asked a question you don’t know the answer to Guddy have it especially bad because 1) we are claiming to be knowledgable 2) People are paying us to entertain/inform them and 3) It is expected that we field questions constantly during a tour! There are a couple of ways to respond when you are caught in the moment. Is this something guddies can get away with? Is making up answers the best way to avoid losing credibility? Find out today in this week’s tour guide training! Finished watching? Let us know in the comments below if you’ve ever been caught in a lie to a guest. How do you answer questions you don’t have the answers to?
What to do with your hands while speaking? In this video, we’ll look at four types of effective hand gestures to put in your toolbox. There is a good chance that you are already using 'the give', 'the mime', 'the show' and 'the chop' - but in this video we’ll look at how effectively speaking with our hands is all about choosing the right gesture at the right moment. We’ll also find your base posture, which is the position that you should gesture to, and from, when making hand movements. This will keep your motion natural looking and give you an idea of where to put your arms when not actively gesturing. We’ll also look at where 90% of your hand movements should be to avoid being distracting or confusing.
Respect is the universal language of service, but often times culture and language can erect barriers and create misunderstandings between people. Here are six pieces of advice for guddies on how to handle cultural differences! --- Everyday, guddies challenge of how to handle cultural differences. It is our job to educate, entertain and inspire travels and allow them to appreciate different parts of the world. In many ways, we are cultural translators ourselves. We explain things that might be difficult to understand and point out things that travellers may otherwise miss. The other side of the coin, however, is that we as guides and presenters, first have to bridge that intercultural gap ourselves. We need to make our guests feel comfortable, respect their boundaries and communicate in a way that doesn’t offend any of their unique sensibilities. Not an easy task, and not one that you can get right all of the time. To help you with this sometimes daunting task, here are some tips to set you up for success when handling cultural differences on tour!
When you think about using your body language effectively, what comes to mind? Is it speaking with your hands? Introducing yourself with a strong handshake? Maintaining eye contact or smiling? What about your posture or the way you move? The reality is that body language often refers to the shared, non-verbal cues that exist between human beings. We often think of gestures, posture, eye contact and facial expressions, but other elements include proxemics (closeness or personal space), paralanguage (the pitch, tone and speed of speech) as well as the myriad of unconscious physiological changes that often express themselves unintentionally (think blinking a lot or sweating when nervous) Mastering effective body language is a skill that takes a lot of practice and a deep focus on your own non-verbal behaviours. The first step, as with most things, is bringing awareness to what your body is doing. Afterwards, you can then experiment with some of the effective body language techniques used by others and see how they fit with your personal communication style.
Here is the skill that will keep people hanging off of your every word. As guddies, we have a lot to learn from some of the great orators of history, as well as great speakers in our modern era. They provide us with powerful techniques to hone our public speaking. Finished watching? We challenge you to use this strategy in your next public speaking engagement – whether its on tour or otherwise. Then come on back, and let us know how it went in the comments below!
