Thérèse

For years I had been walking around with the idea of guiding a few trips a year as a change from my work in ICT. But then again, you know how it goes; your time is usually swallowed up by career, family and other fun activities anyway.

A friend of mine started training at IVOR and this was an eye-opener for me; I had never thought about the fact that you could also train as a travel guide. Gradually, this also started to seem like a good idea for me because it’s a great way to enter the travel world. I also noticed that IVOR regularly shared vacancies asking for a completed IVOR course.

After an intake interview, I started the course with 9 enthusiastic others: both men and women of different ages. It proved incredibly fun to hear everyone’s motivation and background. I enjoyed practising the practical situations together such as holding a welcome meeting and the transfer talk on the bus (where you actually sit down as if you were on a bus!) and applying different leadership styles.

Halfway through the training I unfortunately left my group for a fun reason: one of the vacancies shared by IVOR made sure I was hired and could immediately start working as a tour guide. I went to Greece for a month and was able to apply all IVOR tips right away!

Fortunately, I was able to follow the second part of my training with another group. It was great that IVOR helped me with this and was willing to facilitate it. During the training you regularly get tips or vacancies from IVOR. More and more travel organisations know how to find IVOR when they urgently need a tour leader. If you are still not quite sure, you can also ask the IVOR for help with, for example, assessing your CV and application letter. All in all, the training was definitely helpful in finding work in the travel industry, and I also had a fun and educational time.

Thérèse