How Much Do Tour Guides Get Paid?

"Now I know a lot of people are wondering what I can make being, how much can I earn as a tour guide or tour director. You know it’s funny it can be very lucrative and this is another, like it’s a big secret in our industry on how much that can be made and it’s hard for me to give exact figures. Because there are so many different types of tours, there are so many different types of employers, it depends on the location, it depends on the types of tour members you have and such. But in general, just to give you some general figures, starting with local, destination management companies often start their trained tour directors. If you’re not trained they’ll start lower, but if you’re trained, most of their tour directors make about twenty bucks an hour, which isn’t bad for starting and going to Disney Land for the day. Oftentimes they’ll do long days for several days during the program, so they might work during the day and night and so they are getting time and a half, and they may have like I said some very long days for several days and can end up doing pretty well. If they become leads, they can end up making more than that, I was offered three hundred dollars a day as a lead, I think they are making more than that now. Then receptor services, which is a way to get experience probably the lowest pay is probably ten, fifteen dollars an hour and that’s where you are meeting the groups at the airport and sending them to the ships and such. But it’s a way to get experienced and it may not be forever and it looks good on your resume and it also builds a lot of confidence. Now when you are actually on the tour, most trained professional experienced tour directors expect to make at least two fifty to three fifty a day and that’s times seven days a week. My tours where usually twenty seven, twenty two to twenty seven days at a time, so it’s times that many days and the way we make that and you know many are making more than that. Four hundred and such a day, but it, again that would be for experience so I don’t want people to think that you’re just going to start out making that kind of money. But we’re making salary, we get a daily salary starting the day we leave till we get home, we’re making gratuities, tipping and the tour operators will promote tips to the tour members and ninety nine percent of them do tip if you are a good tour director. So it depends on your salary, it depends on the tipping, now if you’re working for a company, let’s say you have tour members from countries that don’t tip as well as US citizens. Sometimes they will give you more on your commissions, but most will be making, if they are trained and experienced, two fifty to three fifty per day during their tour, so it can, like I said, occasionally we make more than that so it can be very lucrative."