What is a Tour Guide?A tour guide is a person who leads tourists to scenic spots and historic attractions and introduces the history and culture of these places to them.Jobs done by Tour Guidesnavigating, communicating, interpreting, role-modeling appropriate behavior, entertaining, treating injury, ensuring safety, managing disasters etcFive Key RolesAn Information Providerbeaquainted with a great deal information about your country, eg. population, nationalities, geography, agriculture and industry, culture and customs, clothing and food, etc.A Teacherhelp inbound tourists learn and understand the history, culture, traditions and important ideas of your city as well as China. An Entertainermake yourself a humorous entertainer, not a stage actor but a friendly, active, high-spirited person to help your guests enjoy their travel.A Hosttake care of your guests; make them feel welcome and comfortable; feed them and accomodate them; protect them and keep them safe.A Disaster Managerknow and practice the routines and procedures needed to adapt in a number of challenging and threatening circumstances; remain cool-headed enough to take right steps when threatened, a new role in a time of globalization and sustainable development.Section C Techniques of Handling Bus Tour Guiding1. Cooperating with the driverLearn to respect your driver partner, distinguish your respective roles and try to establish a professional, friendly, positive and fun relationship with him.2. Dealing with visitors in steps1) deliver a welcome speech;2) set up the ground rules for the tour;3) learn to take a count of visitors in a subtleway;4) try to remember visitors’ name.3. Proper time management1) Timing is crucial to bus tours, and design your commentary beforehand.2) Familiarize yourself with the tour routes and match your commentary with the things within visitors’ sight.3) Note your introduction and explanation must be brief and concise because the bus runs at a fairly high speed.2. Check-in at a hotelsteps for the local guide to follow when checking in the group:1) The local guide should instruct his group to wait in the lobby.2) Help tour leader to go through the check-in procedure.3)Confirm the room arrangements with the tour leader beforehand.4)The receptionist give the tour leader a rooming list and a packet of keys.5) The tour leader assigns the rooms to the group. The local guide introduces the main facilities of the hotel.6) Convey important information to the group.7) Stay in the lobby for 20 minutes after each member gets the key.8) The guide informs the floor attendant when tourists find their rooms dirty and in disorder, or they are having some other problems.Tourist scheduleA very detailed tourist schedule should be worked out after you have read the reception plan carefully. Firstly a receptionplan usually consists of information that can be put into three categories:Travel routeThis part shows the complete travel route of the visitors' stay in China, the entry and exit port cities, time of entry into and exit from China, transportation means at each destination, duration at each destination, and major touristprograms along the travel route.Personal data of the visitorThis part is important for you to plan personalized service for different visitors.Basic information of the tour groupname of the tour organizer, name and code ofthe tour group, number of the visitors, name ofthe tour leader, nationality and working language of the group, special interest and taboos, and so on.principles:1) The schedule should not be too crowded.2) Don't copy an old schedule all the time.3) Don't forget to set free time for the visitor.buy traditionalChinese medicine:• A guide should recommend reliable drugstores to the tourists.• A guide should inform tourists of the limit of traditional Chinese medicine one can take out of China for personal use: product value of RMB300 for foreign tourists; RMB 1500 for tourists from Hong Kong, Macau and T aiwan.• A guide should tell tourists that item such as musk, rhinoceros horn and tiger bone are prohibited from being taken out of China.Quality of the Tour CommentaryGood TimingGroup AwarenessUsing Humor1. What is a Tour Commentary?Generally, a commentary is a piece of written information of a person's explanation and opinion about a person, an object or an event. A tour commentary takes the form of verbal messages, and is considered the information you pass on to your audience when you conduct a tour. In this unit, we will limit a tour commentary to a narrow sense: the information you offer in a spoken form that can help the visitors better understand the theme of the tour.2. What Can Be Expressed in a Tour Commentary?1) Offer Facts2) Add Your Opinions3.Who Are the Audience of Your Commentary?1) Who Are Your Visitors?Find out some basic characteristics of your visitors such as age bracket, educational and cultural background, their gender difference, their nationalities, and their primary interest before you prepare your tour commentary.2) How Many Visitors Are There in a Group?This is a question that might be overlooked. A tour group may contain a different number of visitors, and the presentation for a small group can be very different from that of a large group3) What Do the Visitors Want to Know?It is far from enough just to know who the visitors are. Once you meet your visitors, you should make sure you understand what they expect to know about your place. It may be that they come because they just know the place is interesting. They know part of the history of your place, but they do not know much of it, so they expect to be told more about it. Making Your Commentary Communicable1. Use Appropriate Language2. Make your nonverbal expressions supportive3. Learn to listen to your audienceMake your communication interesting and effective1. Stress features of the site2. Break the tour commentary into several related parts3. Relate the sight with memories4. Use tales and legends5. Make an analogy。