The best tour guides have 9 traits in common, and understanding what those traits are will help you select the right one for you.
If a travel agent, travel advisor, or tour operator is handling your trip, they will select the tour guide for you. However, if you are arranging a trip on your own, and taking care of all the details, then it will be up to you to choose the tour guide for your trip.
A tour guide can make or break your travel experience, so you want to get the best tour guide for your trip.
The 9 traits of the Best Tour Guides
To increase your chances of having a wonderful travel experience, here are the important traits to look for when searching for a tour guide to work with.
- Excellent listening and communication skills
- Engaging personality
- Likes and understands people
- Includes everyone
- Patient
- Skilled at working with diverse people with different personalities
- Sense of humor
- Flexible
- Experienced, knowledgeable, licensed or registered professional
Excellent listening and communication skills
The best tour guides listen carefully to their client, (you) to ensure they understand what you want to see, do, and experience. They effectively communicate with you to verify what you want to see, do, and experience during your trip. If there are any possible challenges or unrealistic expectations on the client’s part, the guide will bring them up in the discussions before the trip. With excellent listening and back-and-forth effective conversation, you and your tour guide will each be very clear about what to expect from each other and you’ll get a sense of the guide’s communication skills and style. When you and your tour guide have this type of communication, agreement, or synchronicity, your trip will be off to a great start.
Engaging personality
A tour guide who is passionate about what they do is the best. They truly enjoy introducing visitors to all that their country has to offer. The best guides are enthusiastic and adept at encouraging questions, comments, and thoughts and drawing people into conversations with each other.
Likes and understands people
This trait relates to being engaging. The best guides enjoy being around diverse people. They are observant and understand personalities and group dynamics.
Makes sure to include everyone
Because the best tour guides understand people and are keen observers, they can skillfully spot visitors who may be feeling shy, or feeling a bit apart or out of place in a group, if it is a group trip. The guide is wonderful at drawing people who may be feeling this way into conversation, or simply by standing closer to the client to make sure they feel included.
Patient
Even during a trip of a lifetime, be it a solo trip or a group tour, things can and do happen that will test your patience. The best tour guides are empathetic, professional, and patient. This patience and understanding go a long way in reducing the impatience of everyone involved.
Skilled at working with diverse people with different personalities
Tour guides work with individuals, as well as small and large groups. Invariably, during group tours, there may be one or more travelers who are difficult to please, or one who is demanding or craves attention or is overly critical about everything. The best tour guides are familiar with this, recognizing potentially challenging situations and implementing strategies to address and defuse the situation before it can affect the trip experience.
Sense of humor
Being on tour with one or more people over multiple days, the best tour guides don’t take anything personally, nor do they take everything too seriously, and they somehow manage to impart that feeling to their clients while still maintaining their professionalism. Having a sense of humor defuses potentially tense situations and generally uplifts the mood of the one and the many.
Flexible
Whether guiding a single traveler or a group with a set itinerary, tour guides know that sometimes things happen that require a change in the plans. The best guides take the initiative to address the situation quickly and in a way that satisfies the needs of their clients without taking anything away from the travel experience.
Experienced, knowledgeable, and licensed (registered) professionals
This goes without saying. The best tour guide is an ultimate professional who complies with the requirements of the country’s regulatory and licensing entities. Providing the best travel experience for each and every client is their primary goal.
If you’re thinking about hiring a private tour guide for your next trip, you might be interested in reading my other articles about tour guides and tour operators and how they are different: Do You Need a Tour Guide or a Tour Operator? and Tour Guide or Tour Operator: What’s the Difference?
Finally, if you are ready to start your search for the best tour guide for you, here are three resources to get you started: getyourguide.com, tripadvisor.com and agoda.com.