NY Times: "Colleges Tell Tour Guides to Stop Walking Backwards"

<p>Colleges</a> Tell Tour Guides to Stop Walking Backwards - The Choice Blog - NYTimes.com</p>

<p>Just wondering what you all thought and what are the tours your favor? I am a tour guide myself and am curious to know what information you want to hear the most and how you want the tour conducted. Help would be appreciated!</p>

<p>:)</p>

<p>One thing I remember about the tourguide we had (at the college where I eventually enrolled) was her confidence and poise. It wasn't so much what she said, it was how she said it. She represented the kind of person I liked to imagine myself becoming in college. It ended up being a huge selling point for the place--rightly or wrongly, I credited the college with making her like that. For all I know she was like that in high school!</p>

<p>Anyway, I think that tourguides should always remember that they are a part of the tour, too--at least for some people. Prospectives don't just want to see the buildings, they want to know what it's like to be a student there, and the tourguide is one of the best insights into that. Not just in the questions he or she answers about student life, but in how he or she conducts the tour.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Prospectives don't just want to see the buildings, they want to know what it's like to be a student there, and the tourguide is one of the best insights into that.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Honestly, if that's what they want to know, they should do an overnight visit. The tour is not the way to do that.</p>

<p>I'm confused as to how the tour guide is supposed to have more natural conversations with the people in the tour by facing forward. If they're facing forward, they can't easily make eye contact with the tourists!</p>

<p>Plus your voice won't carry well to the rear. Maybe they need two guides--the walking leader and the talker at the rear.</p>

<p>Then wouldn't most poeple turn around to hear the talker? (A bigger disaster for the schools...)</p>