To Know It All
When I first started as a tour director, I would be assigned to shadow a “more experienced” tour guide. So I could see how that particular tour was suppose to be done.
Most of the time it was the same thing. The TD would stand up in front of the bus and tell everyone at the beginning of the tour, what they were going to do and what all they were going to see.
And they were right. That’s all we did and that’s all we saw. I never understood that mentality. Where’s the excitement, the drama and the adventure of knowing it all up front?
So I started to NOT tell it all. I like to always leave a little something for them to be amazed or surprised by. Giving my guests something extra they can tell their friends and family about when they go back home.
As an example is when we are coming back from Hoover Dam, I like to stop (unannounced) and see if the Big Horn Sheep have come down from the mountains to graze in Hemmingway Park. If not, it’s no real loss because the park offers an unbelievable, almost picture postcard view of what all they just saw.
People love that extra surpirse, the bonus at the end of an already wonderful tour. It gives them more things to talk about. And isn’t that what we want them to do? Talk about their tour?
Off The Bus!
For many, their image of a tour director is the person in front of the bus with the microphone talking and pointing.
For me, it’s not always that way. I like to do more with my guests. I like it when I can get them out and let them get a feel for what they are looking at. Get them off the bus and feel the sun in their faces and hear the wind as I explain what they are looking at.
As in this picture here, from the Glen Canyon Dam near Page, Arizona. I don’t want my guests to just know when, why and where, but I want to be able to transport them back in time to when the dam was being built. Let them get an emotional feeling for what it must have been like to be there and to watch it all happen.
That’s what they will remember about their trip several years from now. And to do that, I Get Them Off The Bus!