If you’re a tour director or guide looking to get hired, crafting a memorable introductory video is one of the best ways to get noticed and remembered. But it can also go horribly wrong. In this course, Alan guides you through the step-by-step process to write, record and edit a phenomenal video introduction that leaves tour operators remembering you…for the right reasons!

Are you a tour director or guide looking to get hired by a large tour operator? This course guides you through everything you need to succeed: resumes, cover letters, interview prep, video introductions, and more.  Our advice, coupled with recorded critiques from a variety of tour operators, will help you put your best foot forward and land your dream job.

Guests don’t remember everything about a tour. They remember the highs and the lows. In this workshop, we use this psychological fact to help you design tour experiences that are memorable, or “sticky” in all the right ways. Crafting a wow moment, using principles like surprise and delight, anticipation, emotional bonding, and involving the senses will make your tours come alive in a new, special way.

Developing a compelling narrative--in other words, telling a good story--is at the center of everything we do as travel professionals. The tours you design, operate and lead tell a story of you, and your company. Beyond phenomenal stories, a tour guest remembers those magical moments on tour. In the second talk we'll look at the power of wow moments, those magical times that make a whole tour worth it. These two sessions were originally part of Tripschool's Boot Camp, part of the Arival 360 online virtual event in November, 2020.

As a guide or tour director, the motor coach can be daunting: you’re up there talking endlessly, trying to fill time, while also keep the tour moving logistically. In this online course, we’ll run you through a variety of ways to connect with your guests beyond just delivering commentary. We’ll share 20+ years worth of creative ideas to make your coach time shine, for both students and adult groups!

We spend so much of our time as guides living in our heads, thinking our main role is to deliver information. Yes, that’s important, but what you say isn’t often what guests remember most, it’s how you make them feel, and how connected they feel to the overall travel experience. Guests remember when you make a deeper connection with them, and now more than ever our travel experiences are memorable because they transform us. In this course, we concentrate on zooming out from information delivery, and looking at all the interactive ways you should be engaging with your guests to give them a deeper, well-rounded experience.

Gone are the days when tour directors and guides can slide by with disconnected dates, facts and tidbits. Tour guests today already know everything; what they want is to feel a connection to a place, through incredible narratives developed by the guide. This kind of engaged, emotion-based storytelling that connects you with your guests is at the heart of the kind of experiential, transformative travel that makes a tour stand out. We call it narrative travel. Developing great stories is more than learning your information, it’s a craft and a practice. So come join us for this practical, eye-opening course!

This is the continuation of our Storytelling I course, which covers the foundational principles of what we believe makes a phenomenal storyteller on a travel experience. Cormac McCarthy wrote, “Things separate from their stories have no meaning.” At the core of what we do as guides and tour creators is telling the story of a place, which has the power to open the eyes and change the hearts and minds of travelers. It’s an awesome power. And it’s an awesome responsibility. Our Transformative Storytelling Course is focused on giving you the tools to examine your tour commentary, and then learn the skills to deliver something truly meaningful to your guests.