Tour Guides Are Ambassadors

Whenever one of our HMA team makes a speech or we give a presentation, we usually practice it before we do it for real.  We counsel our clients to do the same, sometimes serving as coaches.
Practice can make perfect – or at least really good.
On a recent trip, I had the opportunity to take a series of guided tours through a number of Central American cities.
Our guides were all experienced and had plenty of practice delivering their messages.
It was almost as if each of them went to some tour-guide school at a tourism college, hitting all of their talking points and demonstrating their pride of country.
They were each authentic in their knowledge of the histories, cultures, landmarks and current social and economic issues affecting their countries – even if not all of them were positive.  Each of them, our tour guides, river guide and dive-boat crew made it a point to thank us for visiting their country and offered heartfelt invitations to visit their countries again.
They weren’t paid ambassadors for their countries, making their discussions even more authentic.  There’s nothing like that third-party endorsement!