Vienna, Austria
Career Focus: Tour Professional
by Mary A. Schumacher
Do you want to get paid to travel? A job as a tour professional gives you the opportunity for lots of travel, at home and abroad. Although international travel can be an attractive component of this job, other aspects can be challenging.
What Does a Tour Professional Do?
A tour professional can be called a variety of titles, including a tour guide, a tour escort, or a tour director. A tour guide is a fairly generic term for someone who takes a group of people on a tourist visit. A tour escort takes a group on long overnight trips, and a tour director has additional duties of making arrangements for transportation, accommodations, entertainment, and other travel needs.
A tour guide will commonly travel with a group of people by bus, and provide commentary on an area's history, culture, natural environment, architecture, or other topic. A tour guide must also be able to troubleshoot any problem that might arise, from a participant's illness to lost restaurant reservations to a hailstorm.
Therefore, a tour guide is a lecturer, organizer, problem-solver, as well as a travel companion.
What Qualifications Are Needed?
Many tour professionals have college degrees, although higher education is not necessary for the job. While training and certification is available to become a tour guide, the ability to learn about an area is a key trait. A tour company generally will provide a guide with information to relate to a group, but many guides undertake independent research to supplement their talks and to become experts on a region.
Many guides have an expertise in a certain subject, such as architecture, ecology, or knowledge of foreign or sign languages. Guides use this specialized knowledge to enhance their talks.
Tour operators say that the most important characteristics for a tour guide are reliability, patience, organizational abilities, problem-solving, and decision-making. As mentioned above, the ability to learn is paramount. You must also like working with people, because on a tour you will be with people during almost all waking hours.
Who Becomes a Guide?
Recent college graduates, mid-life career-changers, and seniors all have become successful tour guides. Because most people who go on guided tours are 50 years and older, they often like having a guide who is near their own age. Teachers also make good tour guides because of their education backgrounds and their ability to manage groups. However, anyone who can handle the rigors of travel guide life can become a successful tour guide.
How Much Does It Pay?
Tour guides usually are independent contractors. Tour companies don't normally hire guides as employees because work is often seasonal. Therefore, guides must arrange their own insurance coverage and other benefits that an employer might offer.
At the low end of the pay scale is the local tour guide who stays in his or her town. The hourly rate is about $10-$15/hour. However, a guide also gets tips.
A guide who travels with a group can make about $1200-$1400/week, which includes pay, tips, and commissions. However, the guide will have hardly any out-of-pocket expenses while on the road, because the tour company will pay for accommodations, meals, transportation, laundry expenses, and such items.
A tour director, who works primarily in an office making arrangements, will make about $1000 - $1250/week.
How Do I Find a Job as a Tour Guide, and Can I Travel Internationally?
Tour guides work all around the world. Generally, tour companies headquartered in the U.S. will hire U.S. citizens to act as guides, even when tours go abroad to Europe, Africa, Asia or elsewhere. Likewise, tour companies headquartered in other countries generally hire guides from those countries. The reason is clear - no need to worry about work permits. So, if you're an American who wants to be a tour guide in Paris, your best bet will be to contact a U.S. tour company that sends tours to Paris.
What Are the Pros and Cons of Being a Tour Guide?
The advantages of being a tour guide that travels overnight include being paid to travel, even to international destinations. With some tour companies, you will stay at luxury hotels and dine on exquisite meals. You are an independent contractor, so you have flexibility in when you work. If you establish good relationships with tour companies who regard you as reliable and a professional, you will minimize periods without work.
The disadvantages include being away from home for long periods of time, which can be difficult on a spouse and family. You will have little free time while on the road. As an independent contractor, you won't get any employer benefits and you have to market yourself to tour companies. Work can be seasonal, so you have to plan around peak travel periods.
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