Tourist Guide: Between Passion and Work

The tourist guide profession is seen as an easy job because it is enough to tell 4 things we read in some book while we take a group of tourists around who we will no longer see after 2 hours. Well if you are this type of tour guide you are not interested in MeTour!!

We are looking for PASSIONATE TOURIST GUIDES, who do this job out of passion and not as a profession, who want to share their land because they love it and want others to know and love it like them. Our ideal guide is an enthusiast who knows how to excite!!

Today the tourist is a demanding and prepared person, from whom Professionalism, Dedication and Preparation are expected. The advent of digital has broadened the horizons of knowledge, allowing anyone to come into contact with information and content capable of generating value. Being a Guide cannot therefore absolutely mean improvisation or carelessness. Driving is a fascinating and complex profession that requires commitment, study, sacrifice and a good dose of charisma. Being a guide means first of all loving your land and its cultural and environmental heritage and being willing to fight to make it known, but above all to protect it. Often tellers of fables and popular stories, in love with nature, with their own history, with their own legends and traditions, they feed on the shining of the eyes of those tourists who, after following it along an impervious path, suddenly discover a breathtaking panorama that it makes his eyes widen.

A good guide MUST create empathy, even starting your visit in front of a coffee to get to know the group of tourists, but above all to make yourself known. He must know the places, with peculiarities, stories, characteristics, smells, atmospheres, myths and legends and with, above all, a visceral love for his own land. Getting to know your land from a geographical, morphological, historical, cultural, ethnological point of view... but also food and wine and entertainment. It often starts as a hobby, but then often becomes a job and, for some, even a life choice, always lived with passion, describing their territory. Passion is the lever that must direct the professionalism of a guide every day.

A good guide has: Leadership, problem solving skills, ease of socialization, communication, but above all the ability to play the multiple roles of Author, Director and Leading Actor of the "show" that one intends to put on stage. Communication and the ability to create empathy with our "public" are fundamental, because being a profound connoisseur of the cultural heritage of a territory, but terrible communicators, would mean boring and not transmitting. Training and study can certainly be helpful, practicing with an audience of relatives and friends is fundamental, but tenacity and consistency must also accompany us on a path of continuous and constant improvement. However, it is also necessary to shape your own character to make it as suitable and flexible as possible to the needs of tourists, because tourists will never be the same, just as their questions or their responses to your stimuli will never be the same. Surely, a large dose of patience must arm the Ideal Tourist Guide. Being a guide means putting yourself on the line, with your limits, your qualities, your physicality, your personality. And defer to the judgment of others. Always. While maintaining your safety and professionalism.