Technology birthed the self-guided tour. More and more often, an admission ticket to sights worth seeing grants you a pair of headphones and a wearable device instead of a name-tagged human to show-and-tell you the way. Self-guided touring allows for a more convenient and less distracted experience. But it also removes the storyteller, and that, my friends, makes all the difference between a memorable tour and a forgettable one.
Viking River Cruises, one of which we completed on the Danube River in early June (see Going With the Flow), provide a plethora of tour guide experiences. On any given day of the cruise, you disembark to one or two “land-based” locales, in the (sometimes) capable hands of a personal tour guide. Viking contracts with local agencies to provide these guides for small groups of its travelers. For example, having a Hungarian show you the sights of downtown Budapest is so much more satisfying than hearing someone drone on about it on a headset. Sharing a beer with a German on a tasting tour is almost like being invited into his house.
If I ask you to share one of your own memories involving a tour guide, you’ll probably recall a particularly good one. Maybe you’ll even remember a bad one. Regardless, your stories would support my theory: a top-notch guide can make the what or the where of the tour almost irrelevant. The guide himself or herself can make the difference between a memorable experience and a forgettable one.
Consider, I still remember a tour of a southern plantation with my family from almost fifty years ago. Why? Because the tour guide presented herself in a way that made me think we were being welcomed into her own house. She also had this soft, syrupy unforgettable Southern accent that had me hanging on her every word. Do I remember anything about the plantation? No, but I sure remember the tour guide.
So it was on the Viking cruise. We had good guides and we had outstanding ones. The very best of the dozen or so – ironically – was a young woman working on contract with Viking for the first time, as a stand-in for our scheduled guide in Munich. She was, in every respect, delightful. She started our tour with a greeting and a smile, then a little conversation and questions to break the ice. As she led us from one sight to another, she spoke with an energy and pride in her city that can only be described as vivacious. By the end of the tour, as the saying goes, she had us feeding out of her hand. I was so enthralled I forgot to take a picture of her.
But we also had a lesser guide a few days earlier in Vienna, who I’d describe as a speed-walking encyclopedia. He led us on a many-thousand-steps rush through the sights, filling our heads with facts and figure as he went, in a pretty thick Austrian accent. He never smiled and I don’t think we ever stopped walking. Can’t remember much about that tour (or him for that matter) because it was a rush-rush blurry overload of the senses. I need to go back to Vienna again someday so I can (literally) stop and smell their famous roses.
Courtesy of Viking and those many tours near the Danube, I present to you, therefore, the attributes of the consummate tour guide:
- A local, familiar with the city or sight at hand through regular exposure.
- A personality; warm, friendly, energetic, and engaging.
- An overflowing font of knowledge on his/her subject, able to answer just about any question thrown their way.
- A storyteller, able to weave anecdotes at will into the facts and figures to keep it interesting.
- In tune with his/her audience, making adjustments to the tour as necessary (ex. “Am I going too fast for you?”)
If you take enough sightseeing tours, you’ll know whether your guide is missing one or more of the above within the first five minutes. You’ll also know whether the next hour or two will fly by or drag on for all eternity. If your guide checks all five boxes, consider yourself lucky. Most of us aren’t cut out for the job (myself included), whether we like to think we are or not. It takes a special set of skills to be the leader everybody wants to follow.
Life In A Word 
I once toured Princeton University’s campus. The girl who led the tour walked backwards pretty much the entire time, so that she was facing the group.
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Maybe I should add “can walk backwards while talking” to my list. That approach always impresses me.
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You’re list is so true. I’ve done a couple of Viking cruises and I’d say we only had maybe one or two not so good guides. One of the best guides we had was in a small town that I forget the name of, but the guide was this old retired guy who turned out the be a former mayor of the town. He had a pride for his town and he told the greatest stories. Also he knew all the locals and at one point a construction crew was about to start up some loud looking demolition tools. This ex-mayor knew all the guys and just walked up to them and asked if they just take a short break so he could bring us through. Apparently they all knew him and were quite happy to take a coffee break.
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I love that. The guy who toured us through the tunnels of Nuremberg had similar connections. He disappeared into a shop for a second to get the key to the entry cellar, from someone I believe was a friend. We also met his girlfriend at the end of the tour, who had no problem interrupting our final moments to say hello. That kind of personal touch really adds to the experience.
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You are so right. There are tours I took years ago in which the guide was as much of the experience as the attraction was.
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I always think that for tour guides, it’s a job, of course. So, on any given day, they could be having personal things going on and don’t feel like being chit chatty. It’s hard to deal with tourists on a daily basis. I couldn’t do it. Sure, you meet some nice people, but as a job, it would be hard.
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That’s a good point, Monica, about any public figure, to be honest. Good days and bad. You just hope you catch them at their very best!
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A good tour guide is one who can make a humorous comment sound like she is saying it for the first time!
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I agree with you Dave – if you have a guide that takes pride in their country or city and it is more than “just a job” to them, you will have the ultimate travel experience.
In 1983 I took a Maupintour trip to four Scandinavian countries and Russia. We had a tour leader with us the entire three weeks, but for each country we had a bilingual guide that spoke perfect English. In Russia, we had one guide for Leningrad and one for Moscow. They were eager to show you everything they could in the space of our tour day (or evening), even down to explaining the menus for us, translating if we wanted to make a purchase and answering each question we had knowledgeably. Talk about smoothing the way at a time when smartphone apps to translate were non-existent!
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I’m guessing you made it to Norway on this trip. It’s still on our bucket list, especially after peeks at Sweden and Finland. We love everything about the Scandinavian countries, from the settings to the lifestyles. Those people know how to live.
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Yes, I did make it to Norway Dave and even though we had a guide, there were many Scandinavians that spoke English. We spent six days in Norway. There was a lot to see. We also went to Sweden, Finland and Denmark. Yes, I found the Scandinavian people to be friendly and they know how to enjoy life. We can learn from them.
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I agree, there’s no comparison to a tour guide that’s a local and knows all the places and stories intimately. The ones that are in costume and are “acting” I can do without.
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