in conjunction with Tourism Boot Camp
What does this involve? Guide Boot Camp is an “unofficial” 4 week introduction to the real world of tour guiding. Guide Boot Camp will give trainees 21 days of actual touring with experienced tour guides and a week of theory with experienced travel professionals. Guide Boot Camp will give trainees the opportunity to experience activities and destinations first hand, and most importantly will give them the opportunity interact with paying foreign travelers from all over world. Guide Boot Camp is not formal guide training, but is rather intended for those who have completed their guiding course, and need some practical experience.
One of the biggest challenges in our industry is employing good, diverse, experienced guides. When we employ guides, they need to have experience in the destinations we travel to, they need to be travel savvy, they need to be able to handle a tour vehicle and they need experience in interacting and communicating with foreign travellers. We get many CV’s but what is always lacking is experience! We do not just want to send them all away and tell them to go get more experience. We want to offer inexperienced guides the opportunity to travel and experience these destinations and activities first hand. We want to give them the opportunity to learn from experienced tour guides and travel professionals and most importantly interact and communicate with foreign guests.
Why do we do this? Education is one of the most powerful tools for a greater South Africa. Using our time, resources, experience and knowledge, we hope to have a positive impact on the lives of young people and open some doors into a growing and positive industry in South Africa.
Background & about us: Tourism Boot Camp is the brainchild of Pieter Geldenhuys, owner of PG Tops Travel & Tours and Luxury Safaris South Africa. Pieter identified the lack of skilled tour consultants and the simultaneous problem of massive unemployment of youth in South Africa, and decided to try to address the problem by offering practical traning to unemployed young people to get them ready for employment in the tourism industry.
Earthstompers Garden Route Adventure Tours was involved with Tourism Boot Camp from the early stages with Chrissy Wolfersberger Human (owner of Earthstompers) helping the students with training in tour pricing and Excel. In 2018 Pieter asked Hendrik Human (owner of Earthstompers) to become trustee of Tourism Boot Camp, and this is when the Earthstompers team together with Pieter came up with the idea to start “Guide Boot Camp”.
Who should apply? Registered tour guides with valid PDP (please do your official guiding course before you apply) with little to no experience in guiding, wishing to gain experience and confidence. For once, less experience is what we are looking for in candidates.
When: 3 – 29 June 2019
Cost: No charge, all we need is your full attention, commitment and your time.
