The Craft of Touring

At Nature Trail, underpinning our commercial tour operation we consider that what we do in designing, planning and delivering commercial tours of various types, ought not be characterised as a ‘trade’, or ‘profession’, but more fitting as a ‘craft’.

Traditionally, a craft was an activity involving a knowledge-set and skill-set learned, practice and enhanced over many years in making custom-made products by hand.

By ‘craft’, not as a ‘product’ involving skills in planning, making, and executing; but applied instead to the crafting of tours as a ‘customer service’.  This is similar in concept, for The Craft of Touring involves knowledge-sets and skill-sets learned in designing commercial tours, trip planning and deliver of each commercial trip.

We emphasise only ‘commercial tours’ offered for sale and paid for by customers because it is only discerning customers by recognising these experiences offer special value worth paying for.  Commercial tours hold value because customers otherwise could not achieve such valued experiences by themselves.

Commercial tours are distinct in quality offering from volunteered club trips, unpaid trips with mates and self-guided trips.

Commercial tour operating is also far more extensive in skill-sets demanded than for an employee guide/instructor of a tour operator.  TAFE outdoor recreational skills training is limited to ab initio employees of tour operators.  There are currently “no entry requirements” to be eligible to undertake the TAFE Cert III or Cert IV courses.

Commercial tours to have value worth paying for, require many inherent skill-sets that are learned and fine-tuned from training, experience, trial and error, maturity, preparation and an enquiring endeavour in order to deliver a successful quality commercial tour.   We term these differing skill-sets, ‘umbrella skill-sets‘, since each comprises many distinct skills that can be logically grouped together; each requiring special-focused education, training, experience and protocol formulation (policies and procedures).

Here, we discuss these Umbrella Skill-Sets, which we label as follows:

  1. Tour Design (including tour scope, target market tailoring, area selection, travel modes, tour duration, route plan, variations, features/benefits interpretation, tour equipment, tour budgeting and pricing
  2. Trip Planning (of each trip – prep checklist,  reconnoitres, conditions forecast, hazard and risk identification/mitigation, attractions/vistas, itinerary, catering, toilet stops, stays, commentary finetuning, duration buffers, guest manifest, guest guidance)
  3. Trip Delivery Governance (including guest suitability vetting, agreement adherence, route adherence, itinerary adherence, safety briefings, monitoring food safety & hygiene, Group Field Leadership)
  4. Guiding (including Interpretative Commentary)
  5. Day Hiking
  6. Trekking (2+ days hiking involving remote navigation, catering, rucksack camping, superior fitness and remote risk management scenarios, etc.)
  7. Road Touring
  8. Customer Service (enquiries, selling, bookings processing and sales transacting)
  9. Group Field Leadership (context style, safety, welfare, group cohesion, conflict management, incident and emergency responses)
  10. Remote Area First Aid
  11. Trip Risk Management
  12. Remote Area Navigation
  13. Remote Area Electronic Communications
  14. Tour Emergency Preparedness (various scenarios)
  15. Field/Nature Workshops
  16. Special Interest Tours (e.g. Landscape/Nature photography)
  17. Four-Wheel Driving and Breakdown Recovery
  18. Tour Equipment Kits (tour scenario needs analysis, prodcute evaluation, purchasing, storage, maintenance, re-supply)
  19. Tour Research
  20. Small Business Administration (records management, banking, bookkeeping and tax reporting)
  21. Tour Business Legal Compliance  (Land Managers, ASIC Reporting)
  22. Tour Business Risk Management (including agreements, terms and conditions, insurances)
  23. Tour Operation Management
  24. Business Marketing, Branding, Pricing, Promotions, and Selling
  25. Website Design and Content Management
  26. (…amongst other skill-sets)

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