The Importance of Communication for a Tour Leader
Becoming a tour leader definitely needs an ability to communicate well with a lot of people. This is because tour leader is a job that interacts with other parties in many aspects. Tour leaders have to deal with the clients, the travel operator that paid you, the hotel, and many others. Because of that, communication is needed so that you and other parties do not have misunderstandings and mistakes between parties. Obviously, your ability to communicate will also determine your reputation in the tourism world, which in the end also determines your success as a Tour leader. Here, I will explain why communication is important for a tour leader.
First of all, we need to know what is communication that you are going to use as a tour leader. Most of the time, you will need to do two-way communication. Two-way communication is a communication that works as an interaction. It goes in two directions: the sender to the receiver and then from the receiver back to the sender. It keeps going and makes a circular process which indicates that two-way communication is ongoing. The most important point is that both sides understand the information about each other.
Communication can sometimes lead to misunderstanding if the information is not clear for one side. For example, if you and your clients are going to a theme park and you say that “we will meet at the meeting point at 4 pm, because the traffic back to the next place is bad,” to your clients. However, in the schedule, it was written that your clients will be in this theme park up until 5 pm. Later, some of your clients are still playing even though it is passing at 4 pm already. This misunderstanding happens because some of your clients didn’t get the information that you gave, probably because they were too excited. The communication here is not happening, thus it can make things go bad, and it will make the tour will become uncomfortable.
If it becomes uncomfortable, the main purpose of the people go for a trip is not there only because you have bad communication. Tourism is when people spend their activities outside of home for refreshing and having fun. When those people go for a trip but do not have their fun, the purpose refreshing will become the whole opposite of it. People will become more stressed and feeling more burdened. If that thing happens, your job and reputation as a tour leader will become bad. Thus, you have to have communication skills (oral and written communication) in order to become a good tour leader.
Making sure that our ethics in communication is polite and good is also a key to make you a good tour leader. You need to pay attention to the gender, race, sexual identity, religion, and culture of the people you are communicating with (your clients). Sometimes, some people will get offended easily when the conversation is about something like those things I have mentioned. So, don’t start a conversation with those topics and choose the neutral one like hobbies, jobs, and maybe what is his home country looks like. This is all for maintaining your good reputation and also making good images and relationship in/with the public, so that you can be a well-known and successful tour leader.
Public relation skill is also very important for becoming a successful tour leader. Public relation skill is about communicating with others using any types of medium (spoken, written, through media, through activities, etc.) to create beneficial and good relationships with the public. Tour leader is a job about making a relationship with your tourists/clients, other parties like the hotel, organizations, and the people in your destination as well. In order to become a good tour leader, your public relations skill is also needed to make your reputation good. The key in public relations is that you focus on the public who use your service which are your tourists/clients. If your reputation among the tourists, the hotels, and other parties is good, your job will likely be easier. Many tour operators and tour agents will become more interested to pay and rent you as their tour leader. Thus, you will take a lot of orders, which will make you a successful tour leader. The relationship that you made with the public will promote you indirectly from one person to another.
Aside from making good reputation, you can also use public relations tools to promote your job as a tour leader. It can be through print media such as magazines, brochures, and tour guides which will contain about your characteristic as a tour leader, information about events and activities in tourist destinations, and much information related to tourism. The information will not be read by people who want to have a trip only, but also will be read by tour operators and tour agents that will rent and pay you. Another public relations tool which is easier and probably has a larger impact is through the internet. You can make your own website regarding your job as a tour leader, or maybe you can promote yourself in your own social media (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram). By putting it on the internet, the scope of your promotion will be unlimited. From your friends and followers in your social media to strangers who visit your account accidentally.
Those are the reasons why communication is important for a tour leader. Tour leader is basically a job where you have to make your clients comfortable and relaxed while they are doing their trip, and the most important thing to do is to communicate well with them. Having a miscommunication will affect your future as a tour leader. Communication skill is also needed for your public relations. In order to have many clients, you have to make a good relationship with your clients and become a good image in the public, so that people will promote you indirectly. You can also use print media and the internet to promote yourself as a tour leader to people around the world, tour operators, and tour agents.
It is not easy to learn and master communication skills because we have to deal with many and different people. However, it is not possible to master it. You can practice it by observing other tour leaders, or you can go to tourism school and learn how to communicate especially with tourists.
“Communication works for those who work at it” — John Powell
References
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