Tour and Travel Guides

Tour and travel guides lead individuals or groups on excursions to various points of interest, including historical locations, museums, and monuments.

Duties

Tour and travel guides typically do the following:

• Arrange services or reservations for clients
• Research topics related to their tour, such as site history or local attractions
• Plan routes and talking points for tours
• Greet clients and collect fees or tickets
• Escort individuals or groups through areas of interest and provide related information
• Monitor the pacing of their tour and adjust to fit the group’s needs
• Answer client questions

Tour guides and travel guides have similar duties and sometimes serve both roles at once or switch between them. Both interact with people and share information about the places or things that visitors will see and experience. They lead groups and answer questions, providing additional support as needed when issues arise. Self-employed tour and travel guides also may have responsibilities related to running their business, such as marketing and recordkeeping.

Tour guides take people on sightseeing tours or lead them through places of interest, such as art galleries and public buildings. These workers often will lead tours based on their background knowledge or subjects that interest them. For example, a tour guide with an interest in architecture may lead architectural tours of a city. Tours vary in length, from less than an hour to more than 12 hours, depending on the number of places visited or the type of place visited. Tour guides may lead multiple tours in one day.

Tour guides who educate and engage with visitors in a museum may be called museum docents. Other types of tour guides include park interpreters, who take visitors through outdoor spaces, and historical interpreters, who help to re-create the past by playing the part of a particular character in history.

Travel guides plan, organize, and accompany clients on long-distance travel, tours, and expeditions. They typically manage all travel, lodging, and dining for their group. They also handle the logistics of getting their tour group from place to place and meeting local tour guides for tours around points of interest.

Some travel guides work as cruise directors, managing and planning hospitality events and experiences for passengers of cruise ships. Others, such as river expedition guides, might take people on adventure trips.

Tour and travel guides held about 55,800 jobs in 2024. The largest employers of tour and travel guides were as follows:

Tour and travel guides work in a variety of settings, such as museums, gardens, or other points of interest. They may spend long periods of time standing or walking while being exposed to the elements during outdoor tours. Some might travel with groups on buses or other forms of transportation. Travel guides who go on long-distance tours may spend extended periods of time away from home.

Work Schedules

Part-time work is common for tour and travel guides. Work schedules may vary and can include weekends, evenings, and holidays. The work may be seasonal, and tour and travel guides may be busier during peak travel times.

Travel guides will typically accompany groups of clients on their trips and may travel for multiple days in a row, often working long days during a trip, with time off in between.

Tour and travel guides typically need a high school diploma or the equivalent. Once hired, they usually receive training on the job. Some guides need a license.

The median annual wage for tour and travel guides was $36,660 in May 2024.

Employment of tour and travel guides is projected to grow 8 percent from 2024 to 2034, much faster than the average for all occupations.

About 13,000 openings for tour and travel guides are projected each year, on average, over the decade. Many of those openings are expected to result from the need to replace workers who transfer to different occupations or exit the labor force, such as to retire.