How to become your town’s tour guide

Being a local tour guide is a very enriching and wonderful way to meet new people. It gives you an opportunity to show off your knowledge and provide a new experience for those first (or returning!) guests to your area.

It also grants you the ability to boost your local knowledge, connect with your community and chat about your passions. People are more engaged when the speaker is engaged in the subject matter themselves!

If you’re interested in becoming a focal point of your community, there are a few useful steps you can follow to make the most of the experience.

1. Discover what you don’t know

Do your research and find out everything you can about your town. Start with all the obvious main tourist attractions that are the usual crowd-pleasers, and then delve a bit deeper. You want to be able to offer more than a quick Google search can.

Find out and focus on what interests you: do you think there are funny street names around town? Discover how they got their name. Are there famous events that happened in and around the area? Devise a walking tour to tell people about them.

Shops and cafes and local businesses will also happily welcome in any customers you bring their way, if someone serves a famous dish or beverage that’s unique to your region, why not talk to them about having a regular stop each week on your tour there.

2. Prepare a number of routes

You don’t want to keep doing the same tour again and again. Draw up a number of different routes, or differently themed walks, to offer to guests. This keeps things varied and exciting for you too. Take into account bad weather days – and ensure there are places along the walk that you can quickly get shelter in if necessary.

A mapping programme such as Google Maps or Maps.me is an excellent option for plotting routes, and saving places for visits along the way. They both allow you to save maps offline too, so you don’t need internet on the tour.

3. Research some more!

Walk the routes a couple of times so you’re not having to stop and look at a map to remember which way to go when you have a guest. While you’re doing this, pay attention to anything enroute you may not have noticed before, such as bollards that are old cannons and add them into the history as you walk around.Talk to local shopkeepers and friends, and visit your local library for further ideas.

4. Practice your speach(es)

You will need to talk a lot while you’re escorting people around your favourite points of interest. It’s a good idea to practice your key points out loud a few times. Remember, once on the tour you’re giving a performance. You want your guests to be listening to every word! Perhaps you’re naturally good at communicating, or maybe you could use this as an opportunity to take a public speaking course.

5. Network with local businesses

If you’re feeling entrepreneurial you could use your new found skills as a guide to all that is good, locally, to partner up with some local businesses that may be good stopping points along the way to grab a coffee, or a museum that may offer discounted rates if you bring people to them.

Whether you’re a guide through The Freebird Club or just as a passionate local, it’s key to remember that by enlisting your services, people are hoping for an interactive experience that provides more than their copy of Lonely Planet.

If you’d like to show people around, but aren’t sure about doing big tour groups – why not sign up to become a guide at The Freebird Club. You can meet fellow intrepid spirits, share your interests and who knows, maybe even find yourself being taken on a tour of someone else’s town!