Improving Your Tour Guide Narration Skills

"Donna, have you ever done any public speaking or narration? Ew no, how do you make narration interesting? Well it's fun, you know, you don’t want to sound like a boring professor, not that there are any boring professors, you know or just giving a lot of information out. And that's kind of what happens with new tour directors, they think they have to overpower the people with information. And you're lucky today too because of the internet, there's so much information as far as research. In fact there's information overload now. You can go to the cities, the national parks, the attractions, the states; they all have excellent information you can share with your groups. But you want to find the interesting facts; I mean some you definitely need to cover because it’s important maybe to the history of that area. But find stories, and they don’t have to be long, maybe just a few lines to a story and that’s the kind of thing people will remember. Don’t overpower them with dates you know. If it was something that was built, an area that was developed in 1947. Instead of saying in 1947 they built this, in 1948 they built this. Something like, right after World War II, when the guys were coming back and having families, this is the area that developed. That kind of thing. And then once and awhile pull those numbers out and they'll go "oh she does know," because when you say well, in 1912 this was does, it does show that you know facts which is important, but you just don't want to overwhelm them with just a lot of numbers. Personalizing it, you know, this was my favorite place as a kid, you know, this is a city I just love, I moved here 20 years ago and I love it. That enthusiasm and personalization will help. So there's lots of tips, we don't have time to cover everything now. Also, how you speak. If you speak in the same tone all of the time like that they're going to fall asleep after the first ten minutes. But if you talk faster occasionally or talk slower, new guys have a hard time, they can't stop talking. But if suddenly you stop, see, you're doing it, they'll listen. What are you going to say next, what is it? Asking questions. You know, you're going to Disneyland, what year did Disneyland open? People love to be the one to say, ah that year, I know the year, I know the year! You know, who was the mayor? So those are just a few tips, we don't have time now to go through all of them, but those are a few tips I cover in my training to make it exciting and interesting and informative."