Posted by De Tour - Matt Smith
I chatted last week with Cherie Anderson, who offers a well-respected training in tour management. She’s worked for over 20 years as a tour director and cruise director, and has been training tour directors since 1993. I learned the business from her. If you’re interested in this work, I’d recommend her course.
About the training: Cherie covers procedures really clearly. It’s everything from how to check a group in and out of the hotel, to how you can assign seating in a bus to prevent conflict, and even what to do if someone dies. Really thorough, practical, well-organized and common-sense.
She also talks about the attitude and qualities that make a tour director successful. And she offers stories to illustrate the challenges tour directors can face. So her training wasn’t just a bunch of checklists, what to do when. It also helped me understand what matters when you’re running a tour and how to think about things.
Cherie measures her success as a trainer by how many of her students get hired. Her course includes information about the industry and companies she recommends applying to. She has relationships with many of them, so mentioning you’ve had her training actually means something to them. She also sends out email bulletins to announce open positions she hears about. For example, I got an email last week about a company she’s helping to recruit tour directors. Otherwise, I’d never have known about the positions they’re trying to fill.
The last thing I’ll mention is, Cherie’s a sweetheart and truly invested in her students. She actually had a career as a teacher before becoming a professional tour director. It shows – both in how well she presents information and in how she engages students. While chatting with her last week, I realized I’d recommend her to anyone… and that’s when I decided to give her this shout out!
To learn more, check out her website: http://www.tourtraining.com/
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