Posts about Tour Guides

At best we may stay at the Savoy Suites on Wisconsin Avenue or in Crystal City. While theoretically we could swing by, the logistics of getting 45 eighth graders off the bus, up the elevator, and back down preclude me from doing it on my tight schedule. And keep in mind, we're usually not anywhere this close. Most of my groups are still staying out in places like Woodbridge or Laurel.

Instaed, the bus ends up being these kids home away from home. When you leave the hotel at 7:30 in the morning and get back at 9:30 at night you need someplace to stash your bags, leave a rain jacket, leave your souvenirs, grab a bottle of water, and so on.

Additionally, teachers and chaperones have quite a bit of stuff to lug about. Many schools require teachers to have on hand medical consent forms, permission slips, contact information and other paperwork for students. The "drug bag", filled with the students' medications is often now a roll on suitcase. And many groups elect to bring bottled water with them.

This is a must-have for a youth trip to Washington. I half-jokingly challenge my groups to see if they can make it through the trip without someone throwing up. I've had groups decorate the National Cathedral, just about every room on the public tour of the Capitol, the White House, and perhaps most memorably, the elevator of the Washington Monument. These kids are away from home, with all the stress that can entail, eating unadulterated crap, staying up until three in the morning, and not getting anywhere enough fluids. Sounds silly, but staying properly hydrated is a major issue for me.

Take Arlington National Cemetery, for example. We get them off the bus at the Visitor's Center, where all the exterior water fountains (assuming they are not turned off) are barely usable with a sad, warm trickle of water. Heading inside, students end up bypassing the scant interior water fountains because there just isn't any time wait in line for them. Nor is bottled water available for purchase at the Visitor's Center (although there is at the Women in Military Service Memorial).

Then we start our two mile trek through the Cemetery, with a grand finale at the Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Water fountains are available, but limited and often not working. Experienced groups plan ahead and have bottled water for their students, ideally one for the walk and one to replenish afterwards.

I don't mean to just pick on Arlington, which clearly has bigger management problems right now than fixing their water fountains. Visiting the Memorials, the Capitol, even the Smithsonians, require a lot of walking with limited bathroom and water facilities. The National Mall is a virtual desert. Having a place to regroup, get hydrated, pick up or drop off a rain jacket, and so on isn't really a luxury when you are responsible for forty to fifty children.

Nor can we expect them to carry it themselves. Sadly, student visitors will have more first hand experience with police and security officers than any other occupation in their time in Washington, DC. These guys have a demanding job to do, screening thousands of people a day, with the very real threat of personal violence to themselves. Patience is at a minimum, and being in the customer service business, it's my job to make sure my clients get through without incurring the ire of a stressed security guard.

I do this by emphasizing "leave on the bus" as often as possible. Visits to the Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Capitol, the Archives and even lunch stops such as Ronald Reagan Building and Old Post Office are planned so that I drop off and pick up as close as possible.

I can get a prepped and ready busload of students through security in under five minutes by leaving bags on the bus. Search every bag, and it can take up to fifteen minutes. Multiply that by 5-7 checkpoints I have to get through on a tour, and this starts to add up to real time lost.

Not to mention the items you can't bring in with you grows every year. The White House does not let groups bring cameras in. The Holocaust Memorial Museum makes my kids throw away gum and candy bars. Most ridiculously, the Capitol Visitor's Center will not allow empty water bottles in. Cases can be made for each of these, but taken in aggregate it means I need a place for my students to leave stuff and pick it up. The hotel is out, it's got to be the bus.

But all of this is my problem. It's not why you should care. Go down to Garfield Circle, at the southwest base of Capitol Hill one morning in the spring, and watch buses disgorge students in waves reminiscent of Russian soldiers on the Eastern Front. Now picture these same hundreds of kids getting on at Capitol South, trying to figure out fare gates, purchasing metro cards, standing on the left right, and generally getting in your way.

I do take a group on the Metro, every so often. I encourage this. Once per trip. Most of these kids have never taken mass transit, and things my six year old is an experienced pro at befuddle them. When I have this opportunity to show the Metro off, I purchase tickets ahead of time, I hold a "class" on using it before we step foot underground, and we even do a dry run. I have the kids repeat after me "stand on the left right, walk on the right left" in unison before we get on. I make sure to do it on off peak times and use less crowded entrances and platforms where possible.

Even still, it takes forever. Sure, it's a great experience for the kids and I'm glad to show them part of the "real" Washington, but it takes way too long to get fifty inexperienced metro users around town for it to be an acceptable substitute for bus transportation.

Try this on for size. There are, give or take, 45 coach parking spots at Arlington National Cemetery. Quite often in the spring, they're all full by 9:00 in the morning. Do you really want to share the Blue Line with the over 2,000 students that will spilling out of there mid-morning and heading over to the Mall? Sure, it's a drop in the bucket compared to Metro's daily ridership numbers, but you guys really don't seem to enjoy the 45 or so I bring on by themselves.

No, there's got to be better ways we can handle the bus problem, but just sending them all on the Metro won't work for me or you.

Cross-posted at DC Like a Local.

This is similar to a lawsuit filed in Philadelphia by the Institute of Justice. In that case, it was to stop a proposal to start up a licensing regime, here it's to get rid of a longstanding one.

Now, I'm as fierce an advocate of our First Amendment rights as the next guy, but I'm having a hard time seeing how my Constitutional rights are being stepped on. Certainly, I had to take and pass a written test, but once that level of knowledge is demonstrated, I'm under no compunction to say anything. If I want to tell you that Robert E. Lee is in the back of Lincoln's head, or that Dan Brown was right about an eternal flame in the Capitol, or heaven forbid, Tomb Guards are doomed to life of sobriety, no government bureaucrat can stop me. I might not get hired again, but that's no business of the state's.

Which is not to say I'm disappointed in this lawsuit. Sure, the Constitutional underpinnings are shaky, but why have a test in the first place? It was poorly written (although DCRA is in process of updating it), and poorly represents the body of knowledge commonly used in a DC tour. Taking a written test simply shows you can memorize a certain amount of knowledge.

I know many people, while not being licensed guides, could step out on the street today and talk intelligently about this city. Conversely, I sadly know quite a number of fully licensed guides who fall for any ridiculous chain mail passed around. The license, in my opinion, is no great indicator of DC knowledge.

Nor is the license program enforced. I've never had someone ask to see it, nor have I even heard of someone doing so. Generally, a certain number of tours are around the monuments whose guides are unlicensed. Now, I will say most tour operators will ask to see your license before hiring you, but if there is zero enforcement, why bother getting one?

So, it looks like the beginnings of a fun debate. Let's get a bag of popcorn and watch the games ensue!

Depending on how far they're coming from, and how much they can pay, the group will either fly in to a local airport or be driven in on a bus, er, excuse me, a "motor coach." Except for local schools coming on day trips, next to no groups use their own school buses. The coach is driven by a professional driver, with a Commercial Drivers License (CDL), and most of them know their way around DC and are well versed on the patchwork of rules and regulations in Washington.

While a handful of drivers are licensed guides, and a small number of groups get by without a guide, most groups hire a licensed DC guide to show them around town. The guide will either be a "step on," meeting the group in the morning and leaving at night, or an "over the road," staying with the group at the hotel for the duration of the stay.

While a guide is expected to provide commentary on the things we see in DC (I don't shut up for four days), the real utility of our work is dealing with the logistics of getting up to 55 kids, teachers, and chaperones into and out of DC attractions. Can you take bottled water into the Capitol? (No.) Can you take pictures at the Archives? (Not any more.) Where's the bathroom at the Holocaust Memorial Museum? (Downstairs.)

It's a thousand and one questions like this that keep me hopping. Visitors are impressed with the knowledge I display, but I imagine many readers here could match me on that. It's the little things that if I do my job properly a tour group will never notice that's the hard part of my job.

Back to our group. They have arrived in DC. I've jumped on board. They're pumped, I'm ready to show them the sights, what's next? This is where we hit up the most important tool we have: the itinerary. The itinerary is the spine of a tour. It provides structure and support yet allowing flexibility to allow free movement. Well, a good one is. Sadly, many (most?) of my itineraries are lacking in the flexibility department.

Tours aren't quite commodities, but companies have a hard time differentiating themselves. The buses and guides are largely independent contractors, so we're available for hire to anyone that wants us. While I do develop a relationship with a few companies, there isn't enough permanence to allow a company to use me (because I am awesome) and other good guides to differentiate themselves from other companies. And hey, everyone says they hire the best guides in their sales pitches.

Nor can they really break themselves out in the hotels and restaurants. How much a group is willing to spend is far more of a determining factor than which company they hire. And let's face it, there's only so many places to eat for a group in DC. I've eaten at Hard Rock, Buca di Beppo, and Pizzeria Uno more times than I can count (or want to). So what's left?

To make themselves different, tour companies promise groups the world. In your time in DC, you will see the Capitol, the White House, Arlington Cemetery, and all the Memorials. In the morning. Flipping through my itineraries from this season I found a few of these gems:

• 11:00 lunch at Reagan Building, 12:15 Capitol appointment.
  
• Or: 2:30 Capitol appointment, 5:00 dinner, 8:00 Sheer Madness at the Kennedy Center, return to the hotel (in Alexandria) before dinner.
  
• And my personal favorite: 9:00 Holocaust Memorial Museum, 10: Visit the Smithsonian (guess what time the Holocaust opens).

Nothing brightens up a tour guides day than to compare notes and find you have the least realistic itinerary.

But tour companies aren't just the only complicit ones here. The customer often judges the quality of their visit with how much they can see in their time here. I'm certainly not going to tell them they're wrong; everyone places value as they see fit. Sometimes, especially in the last few years, you have groups trying to save money by reducing a four day trip to three or such. And sadly, all to often, you find the "these kids will never come back to DC" reasoning from well-meaning teachers of underprivileged kids.

But whoever is at fault, and I'm not interested in laying blame, the end result is more often than not a packed itinerary that leaves little time to relax. It's not unusual to be at breakfast at 7 am and be returning to the hotel at 10:30 pm. We keep these kids hopping and wear them out. We also have no room for delay. This means while I sympathize with my fellow residents, I'm on a mission.

I will push my visitors like a driver on a runaway stagecoach to get them in line at, say, the Archives, trampling women and small children to get there. I will overwhelm the food courts of DC with my herd because I only have thirty minutes for lunch. And yes, I will do things with a bus that will leave commuters fuming in rage for miles back.

But let me confess my bus sins in another post...

Cross-posted at DC Like a Local.