Tour Guide Practice

Author: Chen Qiankang
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2006-11-01
Features: Many people discover the charm of the tourism industry and its appeal through tour guides, and becoming an excellent tour guide is a dream for many young people. In recent years, there has been a surge in tourism guide exams across the country. In cities like Beijing and Sichuan, the number of candidates has even reached tens of thousands for consecutive years, indicating the strong attraction of the tour guide profession and its widespread recognition by society. The popularity of tour guides has led to a fervent demand for teaching materials, making the existing guide practice textbooks almost countless. Each province and city has developed its own qualification exam textbooks, which, despite being expensive, sell exceptionally well, showing the scarcity of such materials. However, despite their unique features, these textbooks often lack practicality due to the lack of hands-on experience among many compilers. As a result, they are theory-heavy and lack technical depth, disconnected from practice, and lack operability. They are repetitive, shallow, and fail to provide depth or breadth, making them unsuitable for highly practical tourism programs, especially for vocational and technical education students in tourism.
Invited by Renmin University of China Press, we organized frontline teachers and experienced tour guides to jointly compile this guide practice textbook. The textbook is designed to be practical, sufficient, vivid, and intuitive, focusing on the knowledge and skills tour guides should know and master during group tours, aiming to enhance their problem-solving abilities. The textbook aims to make breakthroughs and form distinctive features in the following aspects:
First, it emphasizes depth and details, avoiding superficiality and shallow understanding. For example, when discussing how tour guides distribute room keys, traditional textbooks often casually mention, "Check in and distribute room keys." However, we delve into the various issues that inevitably arise during the process, such as room allocation principles, arrangements for couples staying together, accommodations for single men and women, and lodging arrangements for drivers and guides. Similarly, when covering the purchase of scenic spot tickets, we have added content on payment methods, ticket discounts, and the reasonable use of various promotional measures to reduce ticket expenses. Such examples are numerous, all aimed at helping students grasp the details of tour service.
Second, it considers the relevance between this course and related courses. Tour guide operations involve a lot of content related to travel agency business or relevant laws and regulations. Although courses like "Travel Agency Operations and Management" and "Tourism Laws and Regulations" provide corresponding introductions, when teaching tour guide operations, we still strive to briefly connect the relevant knowledge, helping students form an organic and systematic knowledge structure. This avoids artificially splitting the relationships between tour guide knowledge due to the separation of disciplines, preventing the fragmentation of knowledge acquired by students.
Third, it highlights operability to enhance students' hands-on skills. The textbook honestly describes the procedures and techniques of actual tour group operations, analyzes the manifestations of non-standard group operations and their social causes, and provides necessary reminders on potential situations and solutions during group operations through "Friendly Tips" and "References."
Fourth, it includes a large number of case studies. Teaching tour guide operations should primarily focus on case-based learning. The problems that arise during tour group operations are diverse, and the ways tour guides handle them are varied. These should all be taught to students through case studies. It is certain that many of the issues in these cases will recur in students' future careers as tour guides. Learning now can give them necessary warnings and beneficial insights, helping them avoid detours and gain more experience, which is highly meaningful for students preparing for a career in tour guiding.
This textbook is edited by Chen Qiankang as the chief editor, with Qu Min and Chen Qiyo as deputy editors. The authors of each chapter are as follows: Chapter 1 is written by Chen Qiankang, Qin Shilin, and Huang Lubo; Chapter 2 is written by Chen Qiankang, Chen Qiyo, and Dai Yanping; Chapter 3 is written by Chen Qiankang and Liu Lina; Chapter 4 is written by Chen Qiankang and Wang Yumei; Chapter 5 is written by Chen Qiyo and Liao Jingxian; Chapter 6 is written by Chen Qiankang and Chen Shengrong; Chapter 7 is written by Chen Qiyo and Chen Qiankang. The entire book is edited by Chen Qiankang in the end.
During the compilation process, this textbook has received strong support and meticulous guidance from the Vocational Education Department of Renmin University of China Press. We express our gratitude here! Due to the urgency of time, there are inevitably many issues in this textbook. We sincerely welcome criticism and corrections from experts, scholars, and.