The perfect greeting to start sightseeing tours

Your method of greeting your clients is very important for a tour guide. The client gets a direct first impression of you and perhaps even of your city, from this initial greeting. It is not as simply as a basic introduction. A tour guide should consider timing, boby language and the surroundings in which to present a customized greeting to your travel clients.

Pick Up Location
First, consider the pick-up location. When you meet your clients at the airport, it is usually a long-drive to the city centre. In that case, a tour guide shall prepare enough content to introduce themselves. Besides the basic facts of the city, you may talk some more about local culture, customs, upcoming events etc. Choose some fun topics, so that the travelers do not get bored after the flight. When you meet at the railway station, bus station, or cruise port, the driving routes are different from each other. It is best that a tour guide combines their prepared greeting with the sights along the way.

Another common meeting point is the hotel lobby where your clients are staying. This can be very broad and you may not know every hotel in the city. Do some homework before meeting the client. Know the distance from their hotel to the first sight, and the route you are going to cover.

Time of the Day
Timing is also a consideration of your greeting speech length. When a tour guide picks up clients at day time to start some sightseeing tours, you are often expected to talk more. Your clients are excited to hear about this new place. If you meet travelers at night time, you talk less and give your clients time to rest. Save the best for the following morning when they are refreshed. If even later, it’s a mid-night arrival- perhaps ask them are they tired, if yes, will you keep silent completely? No, it is recommended to give a brief greeting. With just one or two sentences, your clients will appreciate your greeting in a strange place.


So how do you start your greeting speech, with a big smile and welcome or something extraordinary and eye-catching. Let us know some of your techniques?