Dilemma’s of a tour leader.

Several parts of this story I’ve wrote earlier about, but maybe it is time to combine them, so you get a better picture of the job called tour leader.

Let’s start with why tour leader is a great job for people who are made for it:

You get to travel, see a lot of the world and you get paid for it. You get to meet and know lots of interesting people, but above all it is an interesting never boring journey. My office is as big as two continents and within these continents there always happen unpredictable things. This makes my job, to take care of the people in my groups, more challenging. Being a tour leader is an adventure, but no adventure is real without dilemmas…

One of the biggest dilemma’s for me is about accepting, or not accepting commissions on tours I sell. I made it my own rule not to charge extra for tours or accept commissions from agencies or restaurants if they rise the prices for my group members. I want to be able to sell my tours as honest as possible and think that accepting commissions makes it more difficult to keep a neutral opinion about what I sell. I always tell my groups that I don’t charge them extra and that it means more to me when I receive a bigger tip at the end of the tour than when I quietly make extra money during the tour.

Some tour leaders easily make 400US$ on commissions during a tour and usually (some exceptions) they do a good job anyway. The group is happy, doesn’t even notice the difference and after the tour, the tour leader gets more or less the same tip I usually get. I have to admit that sometimes this feels a bit sad…

Something directly related to the story above is about giving tips during the tour. This is one of the most difficult things. You don’t want to give too less for hard working people, but also not too much for people who don’t really deserve it. A tip has to be in comprehension with the job that is done for it and in this the ’10 % rule’ goes a long way. But what if the value of the job isn’t clear? I guess a tip then needs to be in comprehension with the effort that has been put into the job and the value of the importance of the job that has been done for you. Did it take a lot of time/effort, was it an excellent service, did it save a lot of time or even trouble? All things that you have to keep in mind and on top I think it is also important to try to value the amount of a tip in comprehension with local salaries in the country where you are.

On the other side, what to do if a restaurant tries to charge a tip of 15% or even more? I know that in none of the countries where I guide tours it is a local costume to pay more than 10% tip in a restaurant. I also know that if I go to a cheap local restaurant the people who work there often look happily surprised if I leave a 10% tip. So why should I allow an expensive restaurant, who doesn’t write down on their menu that they expect a 15% tip for their service, to charge us 15% service costs??? I think at his point most of you will agree with me, but now I want to come back to this restaurant, because their food was good and there are only so many restaurants which can serve big groups. I can tell you that there are a few restaurants in Playa del Carmen where I am not very welcome anymore with my groups.

What to do if group members keep disturbing local people with their big photo cameras? Do you say something about this? I try to explain people before how disturbing this is and if I notice that group members still disturb people I will make a comment, but I do try not to make it too much of a deal. If they get upset with me, I lose their confidence and this is not good for the atmosphere within the group. In the end I`m not their father and they are all grown ups who have to make their own decisions.

The same about giving money, candy, fruits or even toys to begging children? I explain the group how bad it is to just give something for nothing. Especially children need to learn that the only way to survive and make money is to study and/or work. I tell the groups that if they want to give something, it is better that they ask the child to do something in return for it. But in the end it is up to the people themselves to decide what they do with this information.

As a tour leader I get to meet a lot of people, but don’t really have social live. Most people I only meet during the tour of three, four weeks, or up till max. two months. Others who live in the cities that I visit on my tours, I only see a few times a year. This means that I have to make compromises in whom to put my energy in to get to know. I can’t become good friends with everyone and I also can’t make any promises until I’m sure that I really want and am able to fore fill this promise. Some tour leaders keep work and live more separate and have, or try to have a more social live next to their job as a tour leader. For me on the other hand, being a tour leader, volunteer and traveler IS my live. Together with my curiosity in people, I spend a lot of time in getting to know many people for only a short moment. I can only do did by quickly giving away information about who I am, so others feel more secure to do the same. I enjoy it if this works and if I have these little clicks with good and interesting people I just met.

However the past two years have also learned me that I sometimes need a shoulder or an arm around me when I’m sad, or a person who knows me well to listen to me and tell me that I’m right or stupid. These ‘needs’ are more difficult to get from short contacts with group members or people I work with. I do have a few, really not many, female friends who I met during tour guiding and who I still keep contact with. They are very nice and pretty girls, but I don’t sleep with them. It sounds hard, but for none of them I’m willing to give up my lifestyle (yet) and it doesn’t feel right to me to have multiple ‘girlfriends’. So we are just good friends and I am very grateful to know them. But sometimes, just sometimes I feel a bit lonely.

Similar to the situation written above, keeping in contact with my social live at home in Holland is also not always easy. It is already thanks to the internet that I didn’t lose all, but it needs working on. Now for example I haven’t been in Holland for over two year, mostly because I didn’t have the money to pay for my flights. I had to choose between continuing my live as a volunteer and tour leader or going back to Holland. But then I would have to go back for at least enough time to find a job, place to stay and earn enough to pay for this, until I would be capable to go traveling again.

I don’t think that it is fear towards my friends and family to stay away much longer and now I do have enough money to go back and forward I have a new dilemma. Do I use it to go back home, or do I use it to help starting up my own travel agency, something I already want for a few years? Maybe this time I find a way to do both…

Something that sounds totally different, but has some similarities: lots of people like to gossip about is tour leaders who date group members. O yes it happens. I don’t know how often, but to speak for myself I’ve kind of done it twice now. Is this bad? No, I don’t think so we are all human and we all have feelings and needs. I don’t like it when tour leaders (or even tour bus drivers) go after a man or woman in the group, but if it happens that there is a click from both sides I think it is fair to spend some extra time together. Of course this should never cause the quality of our work, or attention towards the other group members to go down. I also find it imported that the girl I like doesn’t get in trouble with other (jealous) group members. If tour leaders can manage this, I think there is nothing wrong with having a date with a group member.

One recent result is that we now use a boat to go from Caye Caulker to Chetumal, which saves a two hour bus ride. It is a service with some risk, because public transport isn’t that reliable in Belize, but it really improves the long journey. I already provided this service to two groups on our own risk, before the agency decided to include it in the regular tour. If things had gone wrong it would have been my head to hang, but things went good and I saved the group a long journey. If they were grateful? I thought all of them, but I`m not sure anymore. I read afterwards some comments from 3 group members (in total there were 39 group members in those 2 groups…) that I wasn’t well informed about the route we travel?! This makes me wonder how much they understand about my job? Hell, I even went against the decision of my local agency to stay in San Cristobal, because of the landslides on the way to Panajachel. I knew that trying to go to Panajachel would be our only option to do a tour over Lake Atitlan and save the group extra cost for an extra night in San Cristobal. I was also confident that I would be able to find a suitable solution if we would get stuck on the way.

No, the persons who think that I’m not always well informed are only partly right, but that part is one they will not notice much of and is usually not me to blame. The information I miss about changes is mostly because no-one (no other tour leaders or agencies) passes them to me. Who am I to ask questions if there is no reason at all to expect changes? Do you think that I should ask before each tour if all restaurants, local agencies, roads and what so ever are still open? Even if I ask this as a general question they will mostly just say yes. And even they are open when I receive the answer, things and prices always keep on changing.

I think that the ones who complained about my knowledge should have read the website well. It is written on there that my job is the logistics and if you want to know more back round info, you should buy a little travel guide. All info I give is extra and if I give too much I am even guiding, which I am not allowed to do, because I work illegal in Latin America.

Yep, if people have a reason to complain, they should do so and preferable to me, because I can only learn from it. But I have to admit that it hurts a bit if I stick my neck out for my groups and receive unfair complains.

On moments like this I start wondering if colleagues and friends are right.

Even a girl from my last group recently told me that I’m stupid not to accept commissions and to stick my neck out to arrange special things for my groups. “They don’t know the difference, have enough money and in the end don’t care much anyway”, is what she said.

Maybe I should first think about myself, than my agency and last my groups. I will gain more money, get more tours, less discussions and best of all, most group members will not even notice the difference.

But I do. However my recommendations, complains and trying to go for fair treatment don’t always make my live easier, it is because I care about the things I do and people I help. It is who I am and I find this hard to sell out…

Partly born from this frustration and a long existing desire I am now working on the plans to start a small travel and information agency on the internet called www.fairtravel4u.org  If it is all going to work out I want to use this agency to promote and sell fair and honest tourism for all parties involved, costumers, sellers and surroundings. Later I also hope to build up and connect the site www.fairvolunteering4u.org , to promote and provide more honesty in volunteer work.

Above I only wrote about some dilemmas in my work as a tour leader, but as you could read in previous e-mails, helping Merazonia brings its own dilemmas with. The combination of these and some recent developments now require from me to make some difficult (private) decisions about my plans for the coming year. Maybe more about this in my next mail…

Saludos and Fairtravel4u

Martijn