Tour guide totally making stuff up - is it ok?

[wolfie11]

I was recently on a bus excursion in Skagway for cruise ship passengers off a Princess ship. The driver/guide was a college student. The bus portion of the tour was around four hours and he talked most of the time. The problem was that most of his information was inaccurate and some was just made up! I used to live in Skagway and worked for the Park Service and I really felt kind of insulted. Park rangers, naturalists, and professional guides put a lot of time and effort into learning about the area they work in, but evidently if you have a CDL the cruise line vendor will hire you and let you say whatever you want.

 

Is this ok or are people concerned that they may be getting total bs on their tours? I mean like “the train was built in 1898 to take stampeders to the gold” and “cantaloupes sold for $80,000 each.” I don’t think this happens with the private vendors as much because they seem to have more roots in the community and hire more locals.

[AKStafford]

I drove tour bus for Holland America for two summers here in Southcentral Alaska... over half the drivers were college kids hired from BYU. They were given a 20 page Alaska information manual, and some of the information in there was incorrect. So a lot of them made stuff up to fill in the gaps. A few would spend any free time studying and learning. But only a few...

To be fair though, of us local drivers - a few of them just made stuff up too. Most of your training is focused on safely operating the motorcoach.

So... I hope no one going on any of these tours think that they are guaranteed a knowledgable expert. You might get lucky, but in most cases its just someone doing it as a summer gig hoping for good tips.

[0 cont left]

I've been told by tour guides to only believe half of what any tour guide says -- the trick is to know which half

[martincath]

Zero respect for guides who do that - and I'm happy to interrupt and correct them at the time (politely, and even as a private aside if it seems like a genuine mistake rather than just a line of bull). I'm actually pretty sure that the reason one the local Tour Guys free walking tours ceased is because I went on it during the pilot phase and spent at least half the tour correcting the errors of the guide who was leading it! Rather than do the research to bring the tour up to snuff, they just canned it.

 

Embroidering a tale to make a better story, inferences where there is no documented history, good story-telling techniques in general certainly excuse a little fudging here and there where it adds to the entertainment value of the tour without badly screwing with the facts - unless it's an academic tour where the standards should be facts first, everything else by the wayside. Genuine mistakes like mixing up years, slips of the tongue, not being able to answer an unexpected question - fine, nobody's perfect, and in fact how a guide responds when an error is noticed or a tricky question asked is a big factor in how much I tip them. Anybody can learn a bunch of data with enough practise, it's when things go off-book that you find out whether your guide really knows their stuff or not.

 

That said, there is a place for great stories that play very fast & loose with the facts - I'd definitely be interested in taking a tour that was advertised as total BS in the first place, just to see how outrageously entertaining the stories would get! It's all about the expectations... I used to be a guide myself, and have known tons of them, and the good ones who are more about the show than the substance introduce the tour that way with their first spiel. "If you want dry facts, I'll email you a list of books and online articles to read. I'm going to focus more on the human side of the stories and tell you the kind of things I imagine Historical Figures A&B might have said to each other when liquored up!" pretty much explains the success of the show Drunk History;-)

[AKStafford]

unless it's an academic tour where the standards should be facts first

One time me and other driver were sent to Valdez to meet a smaller ship for an out-of-the ordinary charter. Some how he had it in his head that this ship was one of those floating universities... So we stayed up almost all night double studying our Alaska materials we had collected. Both of us were pretty decent at the touring and that's why they sent us but we wanted to be on top of our game. We assumed we'd have a bunch of highly educated grad students on an academic tour.

Nope. It was your usual collection of lil' ol' ladies, chubby middle aged guys and bored teenagers. They got a heck of a tour though...

[JT1962]

I think it depends on how the tour is described as to how big of an issue it is if everything is not factual. If it is primarily a sightseeing tour and the tour guide throws in a few facts that may not be correct, it doesn’t really bother me. If it is billed as a historical tour and they are making things up, then that is a problem.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

[oaktreerb]

I was recently on a bus excursion in Skagway for cruise ship passengers off a Princess ship. The driver/guide was a college student. The bus portion of the tour was around four hours and he talked most of the time. The problem was that most of his information was inaccurate and some was just made up! I used to live in Skagway and worked for the Park Service and I really felt kind of insulted. Park rangers, naturalists, and professional guides put a lot of time and effort into learning about the area they work in, but evidently if you have a CDL the cruise line vendor will hire you and let you say whatever you want.

 

Is this ok or are people concerned that they may be getting total bs on their tours? I mean like “the train was built in 1898 to take stampeders to the gold” and “cantaloupes sold for $80,000 each.” I don’t think this happens with the private vendors as much because they seem to have more roots in the community and hire more locals.

 

NOT OK. If he is only the bus driver to get you from point A to B he should let you know he is a driver. If this was a narrated tour then it is his responsibility to know what he is talking about. Did you evaluate the tour for Princess? You really should let Princess know that he is not doing his job so they can educate or replace him. Some bus trips have a driver and a knowledgeable narrator.

[oaktreerb]

I drove tour bus for Holland America for two summers here in Southcentral Alaska... over half the drivers were college kids hired from BYU. They were given a 20 page Alaska information manual, and some of the information in there was incorrect. So a lot of them made stuff up to fill in the gaps. A few would spend any free time studying and learning. But only a few...

To be fair though, of us local drivers - a few of them just made stuff up too. Most of your training is focused on safely operating the motorcoach.

So... I hope no one going on any of these tours think that they are guaranteed a knowledgable expert. You might get lucky, but in most cases its just someone doing it as a summer gig hoping for good tips.

 

If I pay for a tour i expect to have the narrator know what they are presenting. We have had some excellent tour guides (and drivers) on our HAL Yukon adventures in the past. Their enthusiasm for the Great Land is evident when they stop the bus so that we can all enjoy watching a herd of caribou or a moose or bear along the way. We had one train hostess from Denali to Fairbanks who was totally uninterested and I think she was a local. I don’t think anybody tipped her. The next year HAL switched to buses on that route.

 

Maybe you were one of those great, enthusiastic and knowledgeable drivers who made us want to return to Alaska again and again!

[bottom-dragger]

continuing the tradition of Soapy Smith

[martincath]

One time me and other driver were sent to Valdez to meet a smaller ship for an out-of-the ordinary charter. Some how he had it in his head that this ship was one of those floating universities... So we stayed up almost all night double studying our Alaska materials we had collected. Both of us were pretty decent at the touring and that's why they sent us but we wanted to be on top of our game. We assumed we'd have a bunch of highly educated grad students on an academic tour.

Nope. It was your usual collection of lil' ol' ladies, chubby middle aged guys and bored teenagers. They got a heck of a tour though...

:')

I had a similar experience in Toronto, except we were actually told up-front that everyone on the tour was a visiting teacher (big educational conference in town, folks from all over) and they wanted to know the real stuff about an ethnic neighbourhood other than their own. Greektown was one of my touring areas and I was also volunteering in a local high school, thus able to give a perspective other than academic on the local educational scene, so I was asked to guide a group there.

 

 

I made sure I double-checked all my dates and names, dropped out my usual 'this was the where movie X filmed scene Y' low-brow stuff, and even checked the most up-to-date info vis a vis Macedonia as there were frequent Greektown protests about it at that time and a bunch of yelling people waving flags tends to have tour groups ask what's going on.

 

The group I was allocated turned out to be a bunch of Chinese educational bigwigs, administrators rather than teachers, except for one delightfully earnest young female teacher who was obviously terrified to be in the group. She was the only one who asked any questions for the first hour or so - the dudes hardly spoke at all and looked bored out of their gourds, until an exchange of rapid-fire Mandarin between the oldest guy and her.

 

She turns to me and apologizes, says she's feeling ill and has to get back to the hotel. All very odd, she didn't look ill, so I knew there was something else going on... After I flagged down a cab and put her in it, the spokesman for the dudes addressed me: "We do not care about the Greeks, please take us to the best strip club in Toronto."

 

So yes indeedy, I feel your pain at boning up on your material extra well for naught;-)

[sailingwithfriends]

We were on a tour at the end of May and had a wonderful college student named Morgan drive our bus. He pretty much told us that if he starts a story with, "legend has it" or "it's been said", it's just stuff that is made up or stories that have been passed down without facts to back it up. He gave us quiet a few laughs with those stories. He also told us a lot of facts also. One of the best tours I have been on.

[bob brown]

deleted

Edited June 28, 2018 by bob brown
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