Tour-Guiding Seminar

Regular training and further education is a given A to Z for tour guides today. Qualified tour guides are characterized by a confident approach and professional dealings with customers, organisational and presentation skills and their comprehensive knowledge.

The RDA considers tour guiding a high priority issue. Professional tour guides are a sure guarantee for successful, well-run, safe and well-received coach holidays. They are calling cards for holiday companies and important image bearers for the coach tourism sector as a whole.

The RDA Academy "Qualified Tour Guides" seminar is geared in the first instance to experienced tour guides wishing to top up and expand their knowledge base. It offers new entrants to the business a complete overview of the requirements and demands of this field of employment along with practical examples and case studies. The seminar is also highly beneficial to RDA member companies based outside Germany – especially for their German-speaking tour guides and operations staff.

Content:

• Guest and tour operator requirements
• Organisation, standard situations such as check-in and departure
• Rest breaks, arrival at hotels, excursions, operational integration
• Emergencies: behaviour, guest information, communications with head office and other relevant locations
• Methodology - didactics - social competence: customer types, guest information suited to adults and to the particular tour at hand, on-road tour commentaries and guided visits
• Conflict situations (customers, coach drivers), basic psychological knowledge
• Travel law and qualified handling of customer complaints
• Tourism: basic knowledge on how the diverse parts of the tourism service chain work and interact with each other
• Geography: what tour guides should know to best inform guests about countries and destinations. Grid for compiling information on culture, countries and their inhabitants
• Basics of guest management and customer entertainment
• Social insurance for tour guides
• Tour-guiding and ostensible self-employment
• Preparations for the Tour-Guiding Certificate of the University of Bremen and  Federal German Tourism Federation