In the peak season for tourism, tour operators are often on a run searching for qualified tour-guides to be in front of tourists and an ambassador for Vietnam tourism. Accordingly, RTC is on our own runway to university teaching tourism to meet with students with a passionate heart for being a tour guide, to inspire them with our experiences and to open their eyes to the real world of tourism ahead of them.
Here are our inspiration to share!
Our first stop is Tourism Faculty at University of Social Sciences and Humanities (USSH). With 32 students from 3rd year class, filling our convention hall 30 minutes prior to the open talk, we had a good feeling just looking at those eager young faces.
Mrs.Nguyen Thuy Duong opening our open talk
Started off shortly with RTC’s introduction and instruction on the 2015 internship program for tourism students (more info) at two leading university in tourism in Hanoi including Hanoi Open University and USSH, we then continued almost two hours on Q&A session, at which students are encouraged to be active, raise questions to 10 RTC representatives who are entrepreneurs who started off their own tour company after few years tour-guiding, experienced tour-guides, and alumni from last year program (more info).
Here are some highlight questions and answers from our open talk at USSH:
Q: How could I accumulate my experience from the beginning?
A: Never stop learning from everything around you, experienced predecessors, comrades in the same field, customers, local people at destinations to build up knowledge and experiences on multi subjects and situations. Always take notes. Know your strong points, week points to know what to start. Eg. If you’re not good at English and skills, you can start your career working at destinations that less competitive and requirements like Sapa. You’ll get more decent job opportunities and more chances to have on-job learning. More importantly, GET OUT THERE, don’t play within your shell, seize the opportunities around you to gain as much knowledge and experiences as possible. Interact more with more people to widen your eyes and see things from different angles.
Ms.Le To Diep sharing her experience being a female tour-guide for more than 10 years
Q: How should I choose if I have many job opportunities lining up after graduation?
A: There’re huge demand in tour-guides, and it might be easy for you to approach those job opportunities after completing your study, even way before that. But you need to understand your goal that you set for your self, either long term or short term, who do you want to be in the next 5 years for example. Be determined with your goal and choose the opportunity that most boosts your goal and helps you to get there.
Fun open talk on how to be an interesting tour-guide
Q: How can I practice to be an interesting character?
A: People might say being funny and interesting is a natural characteristics that can not be practiced. WRONG. You can learn to be interesting. If you don’t fill your brain with stories and knowledge of multi subjects and topics, yes you can never be an interesting person. Tour-guide is a job that you need to have info and stories on anything in the world from history to culinary, politics to entertainment, Ho Chi Minh to Lady Gaga. Make yourself an interesting book, you’ll make an interesting individual. But more importantly, you need to know when to stop, what to say with your knowledge, what your customers want to hear and how to start them to talk about themself. Keep it in mind that tour-guide is not an audio machine.
Q: How can I increase my voice volume?
A: Sing ,sing and sing. Don’t say you have a low voice, just that you haven’t pushed yourself to the edge. Go to the edge and jump, you can fly!
To make a long talk short, if you want to be a tour-guide, LOVE your job and what you’re doing, be INTERESTING, KNOW your customers, polish your LANGUAGE, NEVER STOP LEARNING, exercise for a TIRED-LESS body and mind, KNOW YOUR LIMITS.
And this is us!
Get out to the world and make your own luck!
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Lan Chi