Get Paid to Travel

About This Course

If you love to travel and enjoy working with individuals, tour directing, tour guiding, and cruise hosting may be the career for you! As a professional tour director or tour guide, you're hired by tour operators, destination management companies, and incentive houses to escort groups on local programs, domestic tours, international tours, and cruises. You may be on an African safari one week and cruising the Seven Seas the next, earning as much as $1900 per week. If you prefer local work, there’s plenty of opportunity with local tour operators, destination management companies, and receptive services. You’ll find it challenging, exciting, rewarding, and never, ever dull! The course covers the how-to for part-time and full-time careers. You’ll learn everything you need to be successful and how to acquire a position as a professional tour director, tour guide, and cruise host. This includes procedures for international and domestic airports, hotel and motor coach procedures, attractions, tour briefings, narration, and documentation. Other topics include how to deal with tour members, tour safety, and how to handle emergencies effectively. In addition, you’ll learn about career opportunities and how to gain experience and employers for local, domestic, and international travel careers. Tourism is the fastest growing industry in the world. Learn how to be part of it today!

About The Instructor

This course includes a knowledgeable and caring instructor who will guide you through your lessons, facilitate discussions, and answer your questions. The instructor for this course will be Cherie Anderson.

Cherie Anderson earned her BA at Arizona State University in Secondary Education. She completed her graduate work at California State University of Northridge. She has over 20 years of extensive travel experience throughout the world as an international tour director and cruise host. Her tours have included travel to China, Asia, the South Pacific, North and South America, Europe, and Russia, among other places. Cherie has more than ten years classroom experience training students how to be professional tour directors. Today, her former students can be found escorting tours throughout the world.

Syllabus

A new section of each course starts monthly. If enrolling in a series of two or more courses, please be sure to space the start date for each course at least two months apart.

Week 1

Wednesday - Lesson 01

In our first lesson, I'll give you an overview of the tourism industry, including the professions of tour directing and tour guiding. We'll talk about the advantages of tour directing, characteristics of a professional tour director, and the types of careers available, including local, domestic, international and cruise hosting positions. You'll soon learn that tour directing offers a wide variety of opportunities, and it's a career that's never boring!

Friday - Lesson 02

Today, we'll talk about the types of employers who hire tour directors and guides for local, domestic, and international programs. You may be working for an outbound tour operator one week and an incentive house the next. You might work on a day program near home, or you may find yourself traveling to exotic locales. Each company you work for will offer its own unique type of program, and this lesson will help you sort out exactly what arrangements might best meet your needs. We'll also discusss some of the financial benefits of tour directing, including salaries, commissions, and gratuities.

Week 2

Wednesday - Lesson 03

In this lesson, you'll learn all about the general expectations and procedures required in tour directing and guiding. I'll explain the procedures you'll need to know for group management, including announcements and dealing with tour challenges. I'll also explain the different types of tour guiding responsibilities you may encounter.

Friday - Lesson 04

Today, we'll talk about narration and motor coach procedures for local, domestic, and international programs. You'll learn how to be a better tour guide by developing and delivering exciting and interesting narration. Then we'll discuss motor coach safety and procedures for local and international programs.

Week 3

Wednesday - Lesson 05

Now it's time to learn all about pre-tour planning for multi-day tours. We'll review each document in detail and you'll get to see examples of some of the required information, including important documents and lists of supplies. Then we'll go over a list of briefing questions to help you in tour preparation.

Friday - Lesson 06

After this lesson, you'll be ready to start your tour! You'll learn where and how to meet your potential tour members depending on the type of tour or program you want to start. We'll go over a professional tour briefing that can be adjusted for all tours, domestic or international. This is an extremely important part of every tour!

Week 4

Wednesday - Lesson 07

Today, we'll explore the day-to-day responsibilities you'll need to know about for multi-day tours. We'll discuss each step in detail, as well as daily announcements and how to manage optional tours.

Friday - Lesson 08

In this lesson, we'll review international airport procedures. Group check-in and arrival procedures are important responsibilities for an international tour director. We'll go over the necessary documents and procedures so you can assist the group with easy and worry-free departures and arrivals.

Week 5

Wednesday - Lesson 09

Today, you'll learn all about the incentive market, which offers local and travel careers to tour directors. With an incentive program, a tour director can work near home on a part-time or full-time basis, or travel to exotic locations all around the world. We’ll discuss the tour director's procedures in depth.

Friday - Lesson 10

No matter how prepared you are, emergencies can and will happen--the possibilities include theft, illness, accident, or even death. A professional tour director should be able to handle emergencies anywhere in the world. So in this lesson, you'll learn all about handling anything that goes wrong during a local, domestic, or even international program.

Week 6

Wednesday - Lesson 11

This lesson will discuss the typical tour challenges that you may encounter on the job. Whether they're problems with airlines, tour members, or other personnel, or problems with attractions, weather, or transportation, you'll learn how to handle all of these, and many more!

Friday - Lesson 12

In our final lesson, we'll take a detailed look at the responsibilities of a cruise host, someone hired to escort groups on cruise ships. This is a fun and challenging dream job! But because the market is so competitive, I'll provide plenty of suggestions for resume writing, networking, interviewing, and how to get valuable experience.

Requirements

Internet access, e-mail, and the Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox Web browser. The career is open to all ages. In fact, maturity is often an asset. The main requirement for the business is being able to perform the duties of a tour director, which are taught in this class. The tour director should have energy, good health and have the patience to assist the general public.