Travel Guide Careers
If you have a passion for traveling to new and exciting places and a thirst for knowledge, a career as a travel guide may be the right choice for you. A travel guide wants to know about places of interest and likes people. He should be able to interact freely with tourists from diverse cultures. He doesn't just show a group of tourists around a destination, but is well informed and fully equipped to answer queries about that place.
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Job Profile
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A travel guide should know the facts and figures about a particular place. She should be able to put her ideas across effortlessly and hold her audience's attention. She should have a flair for interpersonal relations. She should be able to plan meticulously, organize trips and tours efficiently, and conduct successful tours, adventure expeditions and even luxury cruises. A good travel guide should set norms for the tour and enforce discipline. Presence of mind is essential in order to respond to emergencies.
Qualifications
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A travel guide ideally should have a university degree in history or tourism. Foreign language skills come handy while communicating with tourists. Certificate programs in travel and related fields may be useful, too. The guide must know places of interest such as monuments, heritage buildings, museums and sites of historical significance. He should be familiar with hospitality skills and should be well-versed in first aid and other emergency procedures.
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Types of Travel Guides
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Some guides work at a particular site, leading tourists in touring the site and providing relevant information. Some travel guides travel with groups in buses and vans and conduct tours around a city. Adventure travel guides accompany outdoor expeditions. They accompany clients while river rafting, skiing on water or snow, exploring caves, scuba diving and participating in mountain adventure sports such as trekking and biking. Some travel guides take charge of all travel plans, including food and lodging, ticketing, booking adventure activities and even organizing clearance of passports and visas.
Salary and Prospects
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Travel and tourism is one of the United States' biggest industries. According to the U.S. Travel Association, the industry employs 7.4 million people, and domestic and international visitors generated more than $704 billion in revenues in 2009. According to statistics from Career Profiles, 90 percent of travel industry workers earn less than $48,600 annually, but prospects for job growth are positive.
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