A tour guide takes visitors on guided tours at historical or culturally relevant sites that are unfamiliar to them. Guides share interesting information and entertaining insight into the places to provide tourists with a more in-depth experience. Following the lead of a tour guide in a foreign place usually guarantees that you will not get lost, and you will find the best spot to see and have a great meal, or a fun night out.
Guides sometimes obtain vocational training in travel or tourism, but they are not required to have a degree to hold this position. Language skills are great to have, and experience in the service industry, such as hotels or travel trades, can also be useful.
You will be walking around a lot as a guide, so make sure you are at least more fit than the average tourist if you take on this job. You should not shy away from speaking in public. Unless you advertise yourself as a Zen guide, you will be expected to keep the info and fun titbits coming all day long.
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a guide. For example, did you know that they make an average of $15.13 an hour? That's $31,462 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 16% and produce 51,700 job opportunities across the U.S.
There are certain skills that many guides have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed customer-service skills, detail oriented and patience.
When it comes to the most important skills required to be a guide, we found that a lot of resumes listed 15.6% of guides included new members, while 12.6% of resumes included online, and 8.4% of resumes included safety rules. Hard skills like these are helpful to have when it comes to performing essential job responsibilities.
When it comes to searching for a job, many search for a key term or phrase. Instead, it might be more helpful to search by industry, as you might be missing jobs that you never thought about in industries that you didn't even think offered positions related to the guide job title. But what industry to start with? Most guides actually find jobs in the retail and hospitality industries.
If you're interested in becoming a guide, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 51.6% of guides have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 10.5% of guides have master's degrees. Even though most guides have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become a guide. When we researched the most common majors for a guide, we found that they most commonly earn bachelor's degree degrees or high school diploma degrees. Other degrees that we often see on guide resumes include associate degree degrees or master's degree degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a guide. In fact, many guide jobs require experience in a role such as internship. Meanwhile, many guides also have previous career experience in roles such as cashier or sales associate.