The tour guide service in socialist China is fundamentally different from that in capitalist countries. The tour guide service in China is a tourism undertaking that serves the socialist construction of the motherland and civil exchanges at home and abroad. It takes tourists as its service object, takes coordinating tourism activities, guiding tourists to explain and helping them understand China as its main service duty, takes communicating language and culture as its main service form, takes enhancing mutual understanding and friendship as its main work purpose, and takes "warm, friendly and thoughtful service" as its service motto.
In a word, the political nature of tour guide service exists in all countries or regions in the world, but the difference is that the political nature is different under different social systems. In addition, tour guide services around the world also have the following attributes:
sociality
Tourism is a social phenomenon and plays a very important role in promoting the construction of social material civilization and spiritual civilization. In tourism activities, tour guides are in the center of tourism reception, receiving guests from all over the world and tourists from all directions, and promoting the largest social activities in the world. Therefore, the work of tour guides is social in itself. Moreover, tour guide work is a social occupation, and for most tour guides, it is a means of making a living.
(2) Cultural nature
As the actual undertaker of tour guide service, tour guide workers are the main body. In the jargon, "it's better to listen to the scenery than to see it." Brilliant mountains and rivers, artistic treasures, cultural relics and historic sites can only be alive with touching stories under the guidance of tour guides, which can arouse tourists' greater interest, make people increase their knowledge, appreciate exotic customs and enjoy aesthetic pleasure. Due to the differences in language and living environment, there are often great cultural differences between tourists and tourist destinations, which leads to obstacles in communication and appreciation. In order to strengthen the aesthetic feeling and pleasure of tourism, tourists urgently need the guidance and service of tour guides, and they need tour guides to cross different cultural categories and bridge cultural differences. The cultural nature of tour guide service is mainly reflected in the following two aspects:
1. Tour guide service is an important channel for spreading culture. Tour guides explain translation and talk to tourists every day, so that their words and deeds affect tourists and expand the influence of a country (or region), its traditional culture and modern civilization. Tour guides serve tourists from all countries and nationalities in the world, giving them knowledge, fun and beauty through guidance and vivid and wonderful explanations. At the same time, the traditional culture and modern civilization of all countries and nationalities are eclectic, and foreign cultures spread intentionally or unintentionally.
2. Tour guide service is the medium of aesthetics and knowledge. Tourists should learn about things they have never touched or learned before through tourism to satisfy their thirst for knowledge. This is almost from scratch. We know that the appreciation value of landscape or cultural relics does not exist in isolation. It is always associated with certain natural, geographical, historical, artistic and other conditions and characteristics, and it is a perfectly integrated objective entity. In this regard, there is a big difference whether there is guidance or not. The tour guide explanation service can guide tourists to appreciate a scenic spot, historical stories, myths and legends in the best way or the most appropriate angle, and can introduce local customs, anecdotes, local specialties and so on to tourists in an interesting way, so that tourists can appreciate the beauty of nature and art in a subtle way and increase their knowledge. It can be seen that the tour guide service plays a role in communicating and spreading spiritual civilization, creating spiritual wealth for mankind, and directly or indirectly spreading the traditional culture and modern culture of a country (or region) and its people.
(3) service.
Tour guide service, as its name implies, is a kind of service work. Tour guide service, like other services in the tertiary industry, belongs to unproductive labor, which creates specific use value by providing certain service activities and products. Different from the general service, the tour guide service is not a simple service. It takes tourists as the center and provides all-round and whole-process services for tourists through translation, explanation, living arrangements and activities. Work involves transportation, accommodation, food, entertainment, shopping, tickets, money and other aspects of life needs during the trip. In addition to rich professional knowledge, tour guides should also have certain social activities, adaptability and the ability to deal with problems independently. Tour guides are sometimes like aunts in kindergartens, sometimes like students, and sometimes they are commanders, waiters, security guards, liaison officers, etc. Therefore, the tour guide service is a complex, highly intelligent service and an advanced service. The representativeness of tour guide service is reflected in the following aspects:
1. Tour guide service can improve the quality of tourism life. Tourism is different from ordinary simple rest. It is an advanced leisure form of human beings and a purposeful enjoyment, leisure, entertainment and improvement activity under the guidance of tourism motivation. One of its basic characteristics is remoteness. A tourist is in a strange environment. Without the service of a tour guide, he (she) will be at a loss, so he (she) will have to visit blindly and be exhausted, which will not only fail to achieve the purpose of mental rest, but also destroy the mood of tourists because of excessive fatigue and helplessness. For the elderly and infirm, the lack of tour guide service will directly affect their health. Tourists have to arrange their own accommodation and transportation, which will inevitably distract the energy of sightseeing and affect the smooth progress of sightseeing. With the service of a tour guide, visitors can get twice the result with half the effort. Even those who have rich travel experience and don't need a tour guide often can't do without a materialized tour guide (that is, the tour guide and instructions of various tourist destinations).
2. Tour guide service can promote cultural exchange and meet psychological needs. People are gregarious animals, eager for a sense of belonging. Tourists in a strange place are likely to hope that someone is very familiar with the local situation, can comfort them spiritually and take care of them wholeheartedly in life. Enthusiastic tour guides can eliminate tourists' rigid psychology and loneliness and enhance their sense of security. At the same time, being unfamiliar with the local language and customs will also bring a lot of trouble to tourism. Due to ignorance of local customs or language barriers, misunderstandings often occur in tourism life. Sometimes even unpleasant things happen because they are unfamiliar with the situation and offend the customs and habits of local residents, which is extremely disappointing. Therefore, the task of helping tourists avoid the above phenomenon falls on the shoulders of tour guides.
(4) Economy
Tour guide service is the work that tour guides create special use value by providing services to tourists. Under the condition of commodity economy, this kind of labor has exchange value through exchange, which is manifested as price in the market.
Today, more and more countries and scholars admit that tourism is an important part of the national economy, an economic sector with independent characteristics and a smokeless sunrise industry. Tour guides work for tourists and serve them through coordination, organization, welcome, translation, explanation and agency. The purpose is to guide tourists, facilitate tourists, meet their corresponding tourism needs, achieve the economic goals of tourism enterprises, obtain corresponding personal economic income, and reflect their personal life and social values. Therefore, the tour guide work is generally economical, and the tour guide service provided by various travel agencies at all levels is an integral part of the work of the tourism department. The economy of tour guide service is mainly manifested in the following aspects:
1. Excellent service and direct income generation
Travel agency is the leading industry of modern tourism. The ability of product development, promotion and reception of travel agencies is of great significance to the development of the whole tourism industry. Tourism products combined by travel agencies are sold by signing travel contracts in form, but in fact, tourism products are different from ordinary tangible goods, and their sales are repetitive, which runs through the whole process of tourism and is realized by providing comprehensive services, in which tour guide service plays an important role. Products are designed for reception, and the effect of publicity and sales needs to be achieved through reception. The smooth progress of accounting business depends on the successful completion of reception work and the cooperation and payment of tour guides. Tour guides directly serve tourists, providing them with language translation services, tour guide explanation services, travel life services and various agency services, and charging service fees and handling fees. The products of travel agencies are ultimately produced and provided through the work of tour guides. Therefore, the tour guide service is the ultimate producer and provider of travel agency products, directly earning foreign exchange, collecting money and accumulating funds for national construction.
2. Expand customers and indirectly generate income.
Tourists are a prerequisite for the survival and development of tourism. Without tourists, it is impossible to develop tourism, and tour guides will have no customers. Therefore, in order to support the development of tourism, many countries and regions in the world have invested a lot of money and manpower in large-scale advertising and promotion activities at home and abroad to attract tourists.
However, compared with advertisements, another more effective way of publicity is "word of mouth", that is, after visiting a tourist destination, a tourist goes back to tell his relatives and friends about his reception, travel experience and experience in the tourist destination. This kind of "oral publicity" not only spreads the tourism information of the tourist destination to the people around the tourists, but also improves the popularity of the tourist destination and travel agencies, and will also have an impact on the future tourism flow of other tourists to some extent. Because the personal experience of tourists is more reliable and convincing than any advertisement. Therefore, providing high-quality tour guide services for tourists plays an important role in attracting repeat customers, expanding customers and indirectly generating income.
3. Use the situation to guide and sell goods.
The development, production and promotion of commodities and tourist souvenirs is an important part of developing tourism. All countries and places attach great importance to this and regard it as an important means to compete for the charm of tourists and increase tourism income. According to statistics, shopping accounts for about 50% of the total international tourism consumption. In the total tourism revenue of Singapore, Hong Kong and other countries and regions, the income from selling goods and souvenirs has even exceeded the above ratio. In the process of selling goods, tour guides play an important role.
4. Enhance understanding and promote economic exchanges.
China is carrying out large-scale socialist economic construction, and all localities need funds and advanced science and technology. Among the overseas tourists and domestic tourists who come to China, there are many scientists, professors, experts from all walks of life and people in economic circles. Some of them hope to get in touch with their counterparts all over the world and exchange information with each other. Or want to understand the possibility of cooperation and investment environment through visits. Therefore, in the process of interacting with tourists, tour guides should be caring people, try their best to understand tourists' wishes, report to travel agencies without losing time, actively bridge the gap under the instructions of relevant leaders, promote scientific and technological and economic exchanges and cooperation between China and foreign countries and regions, and make due contributions to national and local modernization.
(5) Foreign nature
Developing overseas tourism is a long-term policy and strategic task of China tourism. Since the reform and opening up in China, with the rapid economic development and the continuous improvement of people's living standards, the development momentum of China citizens' outbound tourism is also very strong. By the beginning of 1998, the total number of international travel agencies engaged in organizing overseas tourists to enter China and China tourists to go abroad had reached 1 162. For the former tour, tour guides provide tour guide services for overseas tourists; For the latter tour, tour guides provide China citizens with outbound escort services, both of which are obviously foreign-related. According to the forecast of WTO, by 20 10, the number of international tourists will reach more than 654.38 billion. Cross-border tourism of tourists has made positive contributions to enhancing understanding and friendship among people of all countries and promoting world peace. The political significance of providing foreign-related tour guide services by tour guides and the role played by non-governmental diplomacy are mainly manifested in the following two aspects:
1. Promote socialist China.
At present, the vast majority of overseas tourists in China want to know about China, China's social system, construction and the lives of people of all ethnic groups, and many tourists want to know more about and study China. Therefore, it is the unshirkable responsibility of tour guides to help overseas tourists from all directions know China correctly. Similarly, when tour guides accompany China citizens to travel abroad, people at the destination also hope to learn about the development of China from the tour guides in China. Therefore, the tour guide's explanation and even every move are promoting China. As a tour guide in socialist China, we should have a clear political stance when providing foreign-related tour guide services, and strive to integrate foreign publicity into the tour guide's explanation, daily conversation, visit and entertainment with a positive attitude. For those tourists who want to know more about China and other countries and regions, we should seize the opportunity to promote China. Of course, in propaganda, the forms should be diversified, the methods should be flexible, and inflexible, rigid, stereotyped and imposed on others should be avoided.
2. Play the role of non-governmental ambassador
Tourism is the largest non-governmental diplomatic activity in the world today. In this sense, tourism promotes interpersonal communication between countries and regions, enhances mutual understanding and friendship among people of all countries, regions and nationalities, and eliminates misunderstandings and suspicions caused by mutual isolation, which is of great significance to strengthening the unity of people all over the world and safeguarding national stability and world peace. In this respect, tour guides play an extremely important role.
In the eyes of tourists, a tour guide is a representative of a country or region, a friendly messenger of the people and a "folk ambassador". Tour guides can make friends by making use of the mass and extensiveness of tourism activities, and make use of the advantages of wide contact with tourists, many opportunities, long time, no language barrier and familiarity with foreign countries and tourists to make extensive contacts with tourists and exchange thoughts and feelings. In fact, the vast majority of China tour guides, with their noble ideology and morality, profound knowledge, exquisite tour guide skills and enthusiastic service attitude, have provided excellent tour guide explanation service and humanized tour life service for tourists from all corners of the country, helped tourists to know and understand China, enhanced mutual understanding between people in China and other countries (regions), made important contributions to China's friendship and friends, and fulfilled the important task of "People's Ambassador".
In addition, the foreign-related nature of tour guide services also requires tour guides to investigate and study the overseas situation, especially to understand the needs and changes of foreign tourists and the management mode of foreign tourism enterprises.
Understanding the needs of foreign tourists and their changes is not only one of the basic duties of tour guides, but also the need for tour guides to do a good job in tour guide services. Because understanding the social status, cultural level, living habits, religious beliefs and hobbies of tourists is an important basis for tour guides to arrange tourism activities; Understanding the general situation, social dynamics, local customs, lifestyle, etiquette and customs of the destination country (region) is helpful for tour guides to provide tourists with satisfactory and surprising tour guide services and tourism life services; Understanding the economic situation and shopping needs of tourists is helpful for tour guides to recommend tourism products and provide shopping services; Understanding the mood and psychological state of tourists is helpful for tour guides to provide more targeted psychological services for tourists. Although tour guides can get the above knowledge from books, books are only general theoretical knowledge, which is far from the actual situation. Therefore, only in the process of getting along with tourists, can tour guides understand tourists' needs and hobbies from their manners, their interest and performance in sightseeing landscapes, and their reflection on shopping and participating in entertainment activities, and find out the changes of tourists' needs. This kind of on-site understanding is more real, which is more helpful for tour guides to provide targeted tour guide services and improve the quality of tour guide services; It is also helpful to improve the development and design of China's tourism products, and to carry out tourism publicity, solicitation and promotion activities more pertinently.
In addition, understanding the management mode, tourism product mix, sales operation and management mode of foreign tourism enterprises will help China tourism enterprises absorb foreign advanced management experience and methods, and improve and improve the management level of China tourism enterprises.
Second, the characteristics of tour guide service
Tour guide service is a representative work in tourism service and is at the forefront of tourism reception. With the development of the times, the characteristics of tour guide work will also change, but at present, its characteristics can be summarized as follows:
Strong independence
The tour guide service is unique. In the whole process of tourist activities, only tour guides often get along with tourists day and night, always take care of tourists' needs in food, transportation, travel, shopping and entertainment, and provide various services independently, especially when answering tourists' policy questions or dealing with unexpected accidents, they often make decisive and independent decisions and report to leaders and relevant parties afterwards. The tour guide's explanation is also unique, because in the same scenic spot, the tour guide should give targeted tour guide explanations at different times according to the different characteristics of different tourists to satisfy their spiritual enjoyment. This is a task that every tour guide must work hard to complete, and no one else can replace it.
(B) a high degree of integration of brain and body
Tour guide service is a highly integrated service of mental and physical labor. Because of the wide range of tourism activities, tour guides are required to have rich and extensive knowledge in order to make the tour guide service perfect and strive for perfection. In addition to mastering the working procedures of tour guides, tour guides must also have some basic knowledge of politics, economy, history, geography, astronomy, religion, folklore, architecture, psychology and aesthetics. , but also must understand China's current major policies, the development of tourism and related policies and regulations, and master the basic knowledge of major tourist destinations and tourist routes. At the same time, we should also understand the political inclination, social economy, customs, religious beliefs, taboos and so on of the country of origin (or region). Tour guides need to use their knowledge and intelligence when explaining the landscape and answering tourists' questions, which is a hard and complicated mental work. Therefore, tour guides should keep learning, not only in school, but also in practice, and strive to expand their knowledge, so as to become "knowledgeable person", master one or two professional knowledge and become tour guide artists admired by tourists. On the other hand, the workload of tour guides is also quite heavy. In addition to introducing and explaining during the tour, they should also help solve problems anytime and anywhere according to the requirements of tourists, regardless of details. Especially in the tourist season, tour guides often stay around the clock, accompanying tourists all day and all month. No matter how long they work outside in cold and hot weather, they consume a lot of energy and often can't have a normal rest. Therefore, tour guides are required to have a high degree of professionalism and good physique.
(C) the objective requirements are complex and changeable
There are certain rules for tour guide service, such as pick-up, drop-off, travel service and the contact and coordination of various relationships. And it is relatively standardized and convenient to follow certain procedures. However, in the tour guide service, there are many uncertainties and unknowns, and the objective requirements are complex and changeable. Even within the scheduled schedule and procedures, the specific situation may vary widely, unexpected situations may occur at any time, and various contradictions may erupt in the process of tourism. Therefore, tour guides must have the ability to deal with all kinds of possible and unexpected situations. To sum up, the complexity of tour guide service mainly includes the following aspects:
1. Complex service object
The object of tour guide service is tourists, who come from all corners of the country, with different nationalities, customs, skin colors, occupations, genders, ages, religious beliefs, education levels, and different personalities, habits and hobbies. Tour guides are faced with such a complex group, and each time they receive different tourists, which further increases the complexity of the clients.
Tourists have different needs.
In addition to arranging and implementing basic activities such as traveling, traveling, staying, eating, shopping and entertainment during the tour according to the reception plan, tour guides are also responsible for meeting or helping tourists to put forward various personalized requirements at any time and place, and solving or handling problems and situations that arise at any time during the tour, such as meeting relatives and friends, sending letters, forwarding items, tourists getting sick, tourists getting lost, tourists' property being stolen, and documents being lost. Moreover, due to different objects, different time and occasions and different objective conditions, the same requirements or problems will appear in different situations, which requires the tour guide to judge the situation accurately and handle it properly.
3. There are many contacts and complicated interpersonal relationships.
The job of tour guides is to deal with people, and their services touch on all aspects of relationships and interests. Aside from the fact that tour guides are representatives of destination countries (or regions), as mentioned above, tour guides are also representatives of travel agencies. They should not only protect the interests of travel agencies, but also represent the interests of tourists. In addition to daily contact with tourists, when arranging and organizing tourism activities, we should also contact and negotiate with personnel of hotels, restaurants, tourist spots, shops, entertainment, transportation and other departments and units to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of tourists. This is naturally a complicated matter. As far as tourists are concerned, because they come from different countries and have different tourism aspirations and cultural backgrounds, their tourism needs are basically the same but have their own characteristics. It is very valuable for tour guides to provide "CS service" for tourists. However, a good travel experience is all-round, and tour guides should also handle and coordinate the relationship between full-time escorts, local escorts and foreign tour leaders, and strive for support and cooperation from all sides. Although all the relationships that tour guides face are cooperative relationships based on the same goal, each relationship has its own interests, and the situation is even more complicated when it comes to specific personnel. Therefore, tour guides need to have "eighteen martial arts" to face complex interpersonal relationships.
4. Facing all kinds of material temptations and "spiritual pollution"
Tour guides are in direct contact with tourists from all walks of life all the year round, facing various ideologies, political economy, cultural views, values and lifestyles, and sometimes they are constantly tempted by money, pornography, interests and status, and the chances of directly facing mental pollution are much more than ordinary people. As the saying goes, "those who are near the ink are black, and those who are near the ink are black." If tour guides lack a high degree of consciousness and resistance, they are often easily influenced by them. Therefore, tour guides in this atmosphere need to have high political thoughts, strong will and high political vigilance, always keep a clear head, prevent delaying the opportunity and consciously resist "spiritual pollution".
(D) Cross-cultural
Tour guide service is an important channel for spreading culture, which plays a role in communicating and spreading civilization and creating spiritual wealth for mankind. All kinds of tourists come from different countries and regions, different nationalities and different cultural backgrounds. Tour guides must work in various cultural differences, even in the collision of cultures of various nationalities and regions, and should learn as much as possible about the differences between Chinese and foreign cultures in order to successfully complete the task of cultural exchange.