観光ガイドのトレーニングに向けての基礎的考察

Basic consideration for the training of the tour guide

Increasing the number of inbound tourists has been a policy goal in Japan for a decade. In this connection, there are calls for an increasing number of tour guides in the country. Against this background, this article aims to consider what are important issues in tour guide training. A brief Chapter 1 will be followed by Chapter 2. The chapter discusses the significance of tour guide in tourism, and the skills required for the guides. The core role of a tour guide is to operate as a cultural broker who assists tourists to see in tourist object what is less visible as it is. To perform such a role demands technical skills, various knowledge about tourist objects, as well as hospitality. In addition, he/she is supposed to tell tourists what they want to know about tourist objects, not the other way round. Chapter 3 reports author’s experience as a mock tour-guide in which attentions are addressed, between mock tourists and a mock tour-guide, to different aspects of the same tourist object. Author interprets this difference as an indication of a challenge which tour guide will have to face in real practice. This article argues that various skills are required for tour-guide; one of such skills is to adjust difference in attentions of tourists and tour guides addressed to a same tourist object, and to tackle this difference may be a challenging task to tour-guides and their instructors.