Green Badge Tour Guide – Tour Guiding

Also known as: Tourist Guide, Museum Guide, Discovery Guide, Historical Interpreter, Science Interpreter, Museum Docent, Museum Educator, Activity Guide

A Green Badge guide is qualified to give tours in a specific geographical area such as a city or a town. A Green Badge guide often gives sightseeing tours, which is a walk through a city along and an interior visit to a visitor attraction, such as a church, museum or art gallery. 

Your day-to-day duties may involve:
• touring the streets of a city
• creating itineraries
• presenting artefacts and buildings to guests
• researching historical artefacts and buildings
• answering questions about sites, buildings and artefacts
• adhering to health and safety procedures

As a Green Badge guide your duty is to excite and fascinate visitors about the culture of your city. You will bring the environment to life, so an enthusiasm for the arts and excellent presentation skills are a must.  During the tour you will explain the history and purpose of each site, and stop to answer questions. Sometime a tour will be conducted in a lively environment, therefore a clear speaking voice is essential.

You will direct tours to people of different ages, cultures and nationalities. Therefore you must appreciate the variation between different audiences, and personalise your tour to suit them. Whatever the circumstance your duty is to keep the audience fascinated, and present the information in a clear and entertaining manner. An ability to speak another language is an advantage, as the UK is a thriving tourist destination with many visitors from abroad.

While leading your guests, it is important that you adhere to health and safety procedures and conduct a risk assessment. This involves using traffic lights to cross the road and avoiding dangerous terrain. Before the tour begins, you will take a head count and suggest a meeting place for any members that get lost. At the end of the tour you must repeat the head count to ensure all the tour members are safe.