Secrets of Successful Tour Guide Service: New Thinking and Concepts for Providing Tour Guide Services

Author: Liang Jie
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-01-01
Features: Travel agencies are emotionally intensive enterprises, and the product they sell is tourism services. In the 19th century, Marx proposed the theory that services are commodities. Therefore, tour guides are the frontline and dominant producers of tourism service commodities. Their service philosophy is a single word: "love," meaning caring for and nurturing tourists who are on short-term travel. If every tour guide possesses good qualities, they can treat tourists as family, benefactors, and friends, understand their needs from their perspective, and collaborate well with the agency's partner companies. Then their service will surely satisfy tourists. This book also proposes the concept of "getting it right the first time, every time in terms of service quality." Because tourism services are one-time and irreplaceable, as the saying goes, "Once spilled water cannot be collected." Getting it right means serving tourists according to national standards, and whether it is right or wrong quantifies the tour guide's service quality.
Travel agencies are the leading enterprises in the tourism industry. The product they sell to tourists is tourism services, including both tangible and intangible services during the journey. Travel agencies use the travel fees paid by tourists and, according to their requirements, sign economic contracts with relevant companies of the agency to procure a certain amount of tangible and intangible products for tourists to enjoy. According to the requirements of the international standard ISO9001:2000 Quality Management System issued by the National Technical Supervision Administration, travel agencies and their employees (including tour guides) must fully meet the requirements of the travel contract stipulated by tourists, the explicit requirements of tourists, and the implicit requirements of the tour. Meeting these three requirements of tourists is in line with the quality standards of tourism service commodities.