Have you been on a guided tour that’s had you snoozing midway through? Often, tours are sold on the basis of having a ‘local’ guide—but is that enough? David Whitley has this to say.
We’ve all been there at some point; desperately looking for an excuse to break away from the group without offending anyone, bored to tears with the tour we bitterly regret signing up for.
Tours can be excruciatingly bad for several reasons, but often the guide is the problem. There was the one in Kalgoorlie, Australia, where the guide pointed out the supermarket and the hospital—to show the town had them, just like everywhere else.
Then there was the tour with the incomprehensible man marching his guests round a temple in Luang Prabang, Laos, on a strict script with not a care in the world if anyone was listening, much less understanding. And there was that guide in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, who traipsed between a succession of entirely unremarkable shops as if they were undiscovered jewels.
One thing these three had in common, though? The guides were born-and-bred locals.
Being local is usually seen as a positive thing when it comes to guides. In fact, there’s something of a slavish cult built up around seeing a city ‘like a local’—even though in reality that would mean going to work five days a week and doing the washing and cleaning on Sundays.
But the idea of only locals being a gateway to mines of untapped knowledge still persists. Locals know their city better than anyone, right? They’re authentic and have a wired-in feeling for what makes a place tick, yes?
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Well, this can often be the case, but sometimes, the best tour guides are people who have chosen to be there. Those fresh eyes can give a guide a much stronger idea of what to keep in—and what to leave out. There’s also the matter of interpretation. Imagine being a Canadian tourist in Portugal, for example. A guide who has lived in Canada may well better armed to bring in better Canadian reference points that help explain how Portugal works. That’s not to say a local, or other nationality, can’t put together a great (in some cases, an even better) tour for any given group; the point is that being ‘local’ only goes so far.
Communication is vital too. There’s so much more to being a good tour guide than simply knowledge, regardless of background. You have to be able to communicate it to others in a way that’s clear and engaging. But sometimes, as happened in Laos, there’s a language barrier and there’s a difference between being technically fluent and being clear—heavy accents, emphasis in the wrong place, and dropping consonant sounds at the end of words can make commentary harder to tune into. Listening at length doesn’t come easy to most of us, so the ability to keep a group engaged is imperative.
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In that sense, there’s no inherent difference between being a local and an outsider—you’re a good storyteller or you’re not (or you learn). But a lot of the time, the outsider is going to have to work a bit harder to get hired and all other things being equal, the job will likely go to the local because of a perceived knowledge that may not be accompanied by the ability to engage. However, communication skills and clarity are areas where the outsider can stand out. The same applies to tour companies—those set up by outsiders are going to have to work harder because they can’t fall back on ‘authenticity’.
And that’s the crux of the problem. It’s not that being local is a bad thing: On the contrary, often it isn’t. It’s just that being local isn’t sufficient in itself. And neither should it be the primary consideration. Those other factors—ability to interpret, communicate, engage and read the group, knowledge of what’s changing in that destination rather than what’s always been there, infectious enthusiasm, and willingness to go off-script when appropriate—should come first. And sadly, all too often, it doesn’t.
