Tour guides stressed despite ‘heroic’ image
Most tourism reports focus on the experience of clients, but an Otago researcher has looked at how adventure guides cope with demanding lifestyles, highpressure work, and intensive interactions with fellow workers.
University of Otago Business School Tourism researcher Dr Susan Houge Mackenzie said the work could affect relationships, create anxiety, and result in burnout and high staff turnover.
Her main message was the need to look at tourism as a way of building individual growth and social wellbeing for everyone, rather than just making money.
Houge Mackenzie said adventure guides had to cope with the emotional demands of training, dealing with clients, managers and other staff, safety, environmental hazards and seasonal employment. Sometimes there were immigration issues.
Guides often experienced fear and anxiety, contrary to clients’ heroic expectations of fearless leaders, she said.
Even so, while these things could cause anxiety, they also generated intense excitement and enjoyment.
Other factors that influenced how guides experienced their work included confidence in personal skills, trust and relationships with fellow guides, and familiarity with equipment.
This could be affected by knowledge of the natural environment, fatigue, client ratios and trip logistics.
Houge Mackenzie said the findings were highly relevant as tour guiding evolved from delivering facts and navigating destinations for clients, towards cocreated tours where guides facilitated meaningful experiences for group.
‘‘That means guides have considerable influence on tourists’ experiences, depending on how they manage physical access and personal encounters.’’
Houge Mackenzie said she was hoping to expand her research on wellbeing in New Zealand destinations for guides, host communities and tourists.
She was particularly interested in motivations and emotional experiences, including perceptions of risk and fear, and implications for guide and client wellbeing and safety.
Her research involved examining guiding work in several global adventure tourism destinations.
She was among the first researchers to analyse the emotional experience of team guiding in an adventure setting – river guiding.
The study analysed critical incidents from a 10-year span of white-water river guiding in the northern and southern hemispheres.
She also evaluated physical access, encounters, understanding, and empathy on one of the world’s most popular guided adventure tours, the Inca Trail in Peru.
Each posed an opportunity for guides to create meaningful experiences beyond standardised, passive delivery of information.