Tour Guide Job Responsibilities

Organize tours by groups or individuals in coaches, cars or on foot.

Look for an area that can generally be of great interest to a group or a particular group of people.

Communicate with the group/s or their representative/s about the details of the tour – assembly time and place, destination, accommodation, transportation, immigration concerns (if the tour is set abroad) and costs.

Arrange the necessary permits or letters of communication to the area of destination before the tour.

Finalize all the details with the tour group or their representative.

Offer specialist knowledge on subjects like history, arts and sciences, designs and architecture.

During the tour, communicate with your tour group in a cheerful and engaging manner.

Lead the tour group to points of interest and at the same time provide useful and interesting information in whatever medium – written, oral or through electronic presentations.

Always make sure of the safety and convenience of your tour group.

Make sure all the members of the tour group follow the schedules set.

Communicate with the appropriate officials in your tour destination – like the police, medical institution or tour destination officials.

Make sure of the hotel accommodation in case the tour is schedule for more than a full working day
Make sure that the tour group will be sent home as safely as possible.

Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA)

PATA

• Founded in 1951

• Non profit association

• There are 39 Chapters 

• Headquarters in Hawaii then shifted to San Fransisco and finally to Bangkok

American Society of Travel Agents ( ASTA )

ASTA

• Founded in 193

• Members in 140 countries

• Association of travel professionals.

• to facilitate the business of selling travel through effective representation, shared knowledge and the enhancement of professionalism

Some Basics Definition

1. Attractions : General all inclusive term travel industry marketers use torefer to products that have visitor appeal like museums, historic sites, performing arts institutions, preservation districts, theme parks, entertainment and national sites.

2. Culture : The sum total of knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and customs towhich people are exposed in their social conditioning.

3. Tourism : Tourism where the residents of a country takeholidays as business trips wholly within their own country.

4. Destination : The country, region or local area in which the touristspends his or her holiday.

5. Excursionists : People who take leisure trips which last one day or lessand do not require an overnight stay away from home.

6. International tourism : Those tourist trips where residents of onecountry take holidays or business trips to other countries.

7. Intabgibility : The characteristic of a service by which it has no physcialform and cannot be seen or touched.

8. Leisure : Leisure is considered to be free time in other words, the timewhich is not devoted to work or other duties. However, some people also usethe term to describe an industry which provides products and services for peopleto use in their spare time.

9. Motivation : Those factors which make tourists want to purchase aparticular product or service.

10. Package : A fixed price salable travel product that make it easy for atraveller to buy and enjoy a destination or several destinations. Packages offer a mix of elements like transportation, accommodation, restaurants, entertainment,cultural activities, sight seeing and car rental.

11. Seasonality : The distribution over time of total demand for a product or destination, usually expressed in terms of peak off-peak seasons to distinguish between those times when demand is higher than average and vice versa.

12. Tourism : The practice of touring or travelling for pleasure or recreation and the guidance or management of tourist as a business.

13. Tour operator : An organisation which assembles ‘package holidays’from components provided by other sectors such as accommodation andtransport. These packages are then sold to tourists usually through travel agents.

14. Tourist : A temporary visitor staying at least 24 hours in the countryvisited and the purpose of whose journey can be classified under one of thefollowing heading (i) leasure (ii) business, family mission, meeting.

15. Travel Agent : An individual who arranges travel for individuals orgroups. Travel agents may be generalists or specialists. The agents receives a 10 to 15% commission from accommodations, transportations companies andattractions for coordinating the booking of the travel. They typically coordinatetravel for their customers at the same or lower cost than if the customer bookedthe travel on his / her own.

16. Tourist product : A sum total of a country’s tourist attraction,infrastructure and tourist services which hopefully result in consumer satisfaction.

17. Visitor : A widely used term for someone who makes a visit to an attraction. Visitors are not all tourists in the technical sense in that they will not allspend at least one night away from home.

“5 A’s of Tourism”:

- Accommodation:- All destinations require nearby place where tourists can to take rest and relax.

- Accessibilities:- Basic transportation facilities are required to visit the place.

- Amenities:- Amenities are the services that are required to meet the needs of tourists while they are away from home such as public toilets, eateries, restaurants, telecommunications and 
emergency medical services etc.

- Attractions:- A tourist attraction is typically the interest the tourist have in visiting that place such as for museums, theme parks, beaches etc.

- Activities:- It is the activities taken by the tourist after reaching the destination.

TOURISM DEMAND

The total number of persons who travel or wish to travel to use tourist facilities and services at places away from their places of work and residence, and also it is the relationship between individual's motivation to travel and their ability to do so.

TOURISM SUPPLY

TOURISM SUPPLY

Tourism supply is one of the operations. It is highly reliable on the natural, artificial or man-made, operating, as well as the regulatory components involved in creating the tourism product.