Tour Directing Video
Interested in learning more about becoming a Tour Director and if it's the right career for you? Watch a four minute video Baby Boomer Lifestyle Video and other insightful tour directing videos.

- Baby Boomer Lifestyle Video
- Other Tour Directing Videos

- 2008 Symposium Brochure for Tour Operators (PDF)
- 2008 Symposium Brochure for Tour Directors (PDF)
- Symposium Photos and Videos
- Preferred ITMI Sponsors Symposium 2006

Each time you go out on the road you think youâve heard it all and suddenly someone in the group pipes up and asks "Why do king size beds have three pillows" or why is the Royal Gorge royal? All of which points out the importance of why a good Tour Director carefully researches every aspect of the program they are scheduled to lead. Their destination knowledge is part of the added value that professionals bring to your tour and why tour members prefer to travel with well-trained TDs.

You might ask, "Why is there a need to research when we have local guides hired to show us around when we get there"? The obvious quick answer is that it is to protect yourself when the guide does not show up, or worse yet, when the local guide is not competent or spews out a "canned" presentation that is boring, just plain wrong or unintelligible. In those cases someone must step in and make an interesting and knowledgeable presentation. Thatâs what your tour members paid you paid for.

But there is more to it than that. Often you will have a special interest group who want to know specifics geared to their interests and the local guide is not trained for that. This is where the well-prepared TD adds the dimension that the group wants to make the trip meaningful.

Making it Personal
Tour directors research more than just the major sights. They learn about local food specialties, cultural insights, folklore, music, geographical highlights and the history of the area. They are prepared to answer the personal questions of each participant on the tour. People love what I call "Gee Whiz" facts. Do you know that Chicago has the second largest Polish population in the world? Can you guess Number One? These are the kinds of facts that your tour members remember and enjoy relating to others.

TDâs look at maps and chart the route that they will be taking between stopovers and while in the cities. They check estimated driving times and research possible rest stops. They know the locations and the opening and closing times for pharmacies, medical facilities, nightclubs, museums and special events in town.

Sources for Information
There is a lot to do before meeting the group and fortunately there are many sources to find this information. We tell our students to begin with the Internet. The tourist office sites, from the federal to local level, are the logical starting points. Map companies like Rand McNally are excellent sources as are MapQuest and Mapblast, both of which offer routing ideas. In the U.S. we highly recommend going to a little known site called escortnotes.com to research ideas for commentary. Reading tour operator sites also provides information as to what to do in the destination.

Personally, I like published guide books, such as Lonely Planet and Penguin Travel Guides that are excellent for learning a destination. The famed Michelin Guides and maps are wonderful for European touring. The Knopf Guides series offer great detail for art, the Roadside Geology Guides are great for learning what is seen from the roadside while on the coach driving down the highway and the Sierra Club Guides series is outstanding for national parks, wildlife areas and points of interests for naturalists. The sources go on forever. In our course we hand out lists of thirty books and twenty-five web sites (not including the tourist offices) as beginning sources for our students to use for researching destinations for their exams.

Time for Success
Doing this destination research takes time and it is part of why tour directors are so valuable. It also takes them time to learn details about the special interests of the group, review customs policies and immigration procedures or find out where the local cyber-cafes are located so that your tour members can check their email for messages from their grandkids. When you hire a professional they do all of this for you which frees your time to package and promote your tour to fill every available seat.

The analogy I use is painting a house. For a painter to do a fine job it is not the painting that takes time it is the preparation and the same is true for professional tour directors. They are paid when they are on tour, but to assure the success of the tour, their job starts long before they meet the group.