How to Become an Ecotourism Guide

Ecotourism is an emerging green trend in the travel industry. This is a new approach for travel and tourism to celebrate nature's gifts and to create paths to promoting environmental awareness through the availability of eco-friendly commercial vacation tours.

With global warming, climate changes and other environmental issues affecting the planet, ecotourism is a much welcomed development which intends to instill in our minds the importance of respecting as well as conserving nature as well as cultures around the world. With this goal comes the need for people who can help spread sustainability awareness such as ecotourism guides.

If you have the passion and desire to protect and conserve nature and you feel that this is possible by spreading sustainability awareness, then you may be interested in becoming an ecotourism guide. Currently, there are no special educational qualifications to help you consider ecotourism as a career. However, the skills and knowledge base presented below would be very helpful in becoming an ecotourism guide:

1.    Excellent communication skills – As an ecotourism guide, your main responsibility involves conveying your knowledge about ecological and environmental issues to your audience. This means that good communication skills are necessary. You are also required to be courteous to visitors and provide informative facts to those who want to learn more.

2.    Being bilingual is an advantage – Knowledge in at least one major international language such as English, German and French is an advantage because you will be interacting with people of different nationalities.

3.    Updated information on your particular niche – You need to be an expert in a certain area of ecotourism and you need to prove this to your visitors. You should accurately interpret the key elements of the environment. You should also be able to project the relationship between humans and your niche habitat.

4.    International issues and environment awareness – You should know about your particular niche and also the important environment issues on international or global landscapes. How your presentation would impact your visitors should be commensurate to your skills and ability to present yourself as an expert in that particular field.

5.    Organization Skills and Ability – As an ecotourism guide, you need to be a very good manager. You will be responsible for the accommodation and safety as well as for the transportation of your visitors. This only means that you should plan and implement an eco-tour without problems. Having leadership qualities is a big plus.

With these skills under your belt, EnviroCitizen.org believes that you may be able to become a first-rate ecotourism guide with a little additional training and research!