Information vs. Storytelling

It’s an age-old problem in our industry: travel expectations don’t live up to the reality. The image on the left: an ideal stock photo of my favorite room in the Vatican Museums. It’s what I was excited to experience once again last week when I was in Rome. Instead, what I got was the image on the right. A stampede of fellow tour-takers pushing their way through the room. Stop and enjoy at your own peril. Not only were the crowds unbearable, but my “guided” tour was a tour guide reciting a litany of facts about popes and painters as we all listened on a wireless headphone. It was both overwhelming and underwhelming. I often hear: “Nothing can replace the power of a live tour guide!” And as I was a guide for decades, I wish that was true. But it’s not, necessarily. If all a guide is doing is delivering one-way information and walking you through a city, it can be replaced. I call it “point and shoot” tour guiding: you point to something, tell me what it is, and the year it was made, and some information. This can and is being replaced by technology. Note the hop-on-hop-off tour busses that have dispensed with live guides. Digital versions know more, in more languages. So what’s the answer? Make your human tours truly human. Focus on storytelling, not pure information delivery. Storytelling is as old as humans looking at the sky and wondering what it’s all about. Story is about evoking emotion, wonder, developing a narrative that leads you on a journey. It evokes what can be called “a sense of place.” Information is just reciting dates and facts. Facilitation and Connection. Humans are all unique in many ways, and a great guide can take the insights and perspectives of a group of people, and facilitate a meaningful dialogue. Ask powerful open-ended questions, and let the tour become a journey of co-discovery. It makes for a much richer and more memorable experience.