ADVICES
Difficulties with providing a guiding services in Georgia
This is a positive post reflecting on some experiences of working in a team to provide tours to tourists in Georgia.
Working together:
Communicating with a language barrier
You can be understood but it takes more effort. You don’t need an intermediary but it can help and another person involved can also add ideas and prevent the me vs you issue.
Difference in attitude
An incentive is not always needed to turn up but it can help whether that is money or passion. The the aspiration should be to provide a great service.
Being from the place
Being a tour guide and having grown up in a country doesn’t give you an advantage over the foreigner who hasn’t. It just means that you both have different perspectives and that should result in a synergy.
Split focus
Everyone has a range of commitments but passion and focus are sure to boost the likelihood of success. Alignment of time is important otherwise team members with different commitments can end up with spare time which is nice but not great for getting the fullest out of the project.
Admin work
Give credit where credit is due. Working on admin, branding and promotional is an essential part of getting customers. A good team has all the skills needed to succeed together. Some skills come into their own at the beginning and some later on but recognition for the work done is important for avoiding tension and disagreements.
Individual guiding is competitive
It has relatively low barriers to entry as a market which is why a value-added service is very important.
Conclusion
This post was really a brain dump of reflections. It started out as quite a negative rant but as usual negative can be turned to positive and a learning process.