What Not To Do (or, why I hate (most) guided tours)

It was, as a friend of mine would say, a GD.  A Great Disappointment. 

Yesterday another dear friend, Pauline Eversmann (retired from Winterthur Museum), and I were on one of the worst guided tours either of us have ever experienced. 

Now I have made no secret that while I love historic house museums, I dislike their standard interpretive format – the guided tour.  I am not alone.  Turns out many Core Visitors to museums are not fans either, as our previous research has shown. 

So what made this tour so egregiously awful?  It wasn’t the house and was completely the guide, who in this case was a (supposedly) trained professional.  Based on this tour, here is a “do not do” list for guided tours.

• Don’t shut out your audience.  This guide never, not even once, invited us to ask questions.  He did not even hold out the possibility of asking.  He totally missed out on the opportunity to engage his audience by sharing information about the things, and stories, that may have interested us more.
• Don’t talk about yourself.  Not only was he disinterested in us, he was supremely interested in, well, his interests.  And was constantly interjecting his preferences and thoughts into his spiel.  I really didn’t care how many languages he could speak and/or read (this is relevant how?).  I don’t mind a guide saying “this is my favorite room” or “this is my favorite object,” and lending personality to a tour, but this was constant, irrelevant, and annoying.
• Don’t gripe.  Yes, it is too bad that the property is much reduced and is now surrounded by heavy traffic.  Acknowledge it, tell us why, and move on.  Don’t constantly gripe about it.  Of course, on this tour, it was only one of a few things he griped about.  Unnecessary and off-putting. 
• Don’t mumble.  Enunciate.  Pauline cannot hear out of one ear, and she struggled to understand what he was saying.  There is a reason why many older audiences prefer audio tours – you can control the volume, direct it in the ear, replay if you miss something, and the narrators tend to speak clearly. 
• Don’t look at your watch.  OK, yes, you can sneak a peek once or twice to make sure you are pacing yourself.  He looked at his watch in every single room.  In an obvious way.  It made us feel that we were being herded, almost like an unwelcome intrusion that must be dealt with and gotten rid of. 
  

I also have four more “don’ts” from other terrible tours I have suffered:

• Don’t tell us about your own genealogy.  Especially when it is totally unconnected to the house and the people who lived there.
• Don’t start your tour by singing the theme song from Gilligan’s Island.  Enough said.
  
• Don’t make bad jokes.  Including the sexist ones. 
  
• Don’t forget to bathe.  Honestly.  I cannot believe I had to include this one. 

While most tours I have been on have been indifferent at best, I have had stellar guided tours (thank you, Drayton Hall, for the best tour I have ever, ever experienced).  And I have been on supremely funny ones (bless the guide at Boscobel who said that Thomas Jefferson had the “hots” for Campeche chairs – which is, by the way, true).

But, ultimately, our research tells us that guided tours are not a preferred form of interpretation for many of our visitors, and our experience yesterday illustrates why that is so.  I certainly do not want to return to this house museum, or take other guests there, even though the house, and the story of the truly remarkably family that lived there, is absolutely fascinating. 

With many historic house museums struggling to survive, guided tours may be a contributing factor to their diminishing audiences.  I realize that, for small organizations, they are the most cost effective way of securely sharing a property, but isn’t it time to find more compelling, and engaging, ways to do so?

Do you have any do’s or don’ts from guided tours you have experienced?  We would love to hear your thoughts.  Simply click on “comments” below to share your thoughts (and if you are reading this from your e-mail subscription, go to our blog to comment).

-Susie

Comments

[Steve]

Boy... I really want to know where you were!

And bad jokes are fine - as long as the teller acknowledges their "badness" and they are not sexist. Otherwise, I'd be in trouble!

Completely randomly, I enjoyed one of the absolute BEST tours I've ever had at the unpublicized (per the deceased owner) and never-talked-about Topsmead house in Litchfield, CT.

You won't find much online about it (until I write about it), but it is an absolute gem. The guide was informational, read his crowd very well, funny, "light," accepting of our 3 year old - even including his offbeat interests in his tour, etc.

Bottom line: Know your crowd; if there are architects, highlight the architecture. Gardeners? Discuss the crazy apple tree outside that the former owner loved. Kids? Include them by challenging them to find the owls on the handwoven rug and while they're busying themselves with that game, talk about the rug and how it came to be, etc.

Topsmead was my 142nd (or so) museum in CT - and it was the best tour so far.

[Susie Wilkening, Reach Advisors]

Will never tell.

Ah - the bad joke guy. No, I think he thought he was very funny. He was also the Gilligan's Island theme song guy.

But now I feel I must go to the Topsmead house.

Your bottom line is right. My guide yesterday clearly didn't care who his crowd was. I can understand running more of a monologue if you have a humongous tour, but there were only five of us on tour. It could easily have been a conversation.

[Marguerite Cain]

Sounds like a great time was had by all . . . NOT!!! At least you have the humor and insight to gain a lesson from your GD. The museum experience that stands out as my favorite was Old Sturbridge Village, where we went from house to house (or shop, etc.) where each person talked about what they did. Entirely self-guided.

Luckily, I've never had to contend with a guide who needed a shower!

[Catherine Arias]

It is absolutely baffling to me that historic homes and other museums still insist on lecture-style tours. Research clearly indicates that people learn more effectively and have a more satisfying social experience when tours are interactive, and based on the participants' interests and needs. An inclusive and conversational discussion is more difficult to construct, but well worth it for all involved.

[Bob Beatty]

Funny but I'm in the minority here. Love a good (emphasis, GOOD) guided tour. And love audio tours. But also love the oppty. to have some "downtime" on tours, time to explore on my own, to ask questions, etc.

We must, as a field, get away from the lecture style guided tour. Folks want to hear about a place to be sure, but they also want to engage with its story.

I also believe that tours should focus on larger issues that the site or house is a part of (the historic time period, economic, social, and political history, etc.) to tie it into the larger historical narrative and help visitors relate to it. (But that's a tangent for another time.)

Probably the best guided tour I've ever been on was at the Hay House in Macon, GA in early 2000. I had just attended my first museum training on Crafting the Guided Tour and visited the Hay House on my way out of town. The guide gave a guided tour that was right out of the tour textbook. She was engaging and interesting, and offered thoughtful and challenging questions. I have been referring folks to the Hay House ever since!

Two other great guided tours are the Tenement Museum in NYC and Lincoln Cottage in DC. The latter has a very unique interpretive style that is sans objects and more about Lincoln as a person. Very meaningful.

[Susie Wilkening, Reach Advisors]

You are right, Bob. People want to engage with the story, and we were given no chance to do so yesterday. It was look and listen. Sigh.

I'll have to add Hay House to my list as well. Thanks, Bob. She sounds like my amazing guide at Drayton Hall, who made an unfurnished house come to life. And created a conversation and made us think.

Totally agree about the Tenement Museum. They also do a fantastic job. Will have to personally reserve judgment on Lincoln Cottage as I have not been there yet.

[Kevin Sheen]

I would think that any reason to look at his watch would have been eliminated by the fact that he 1) was supposedly a pro and 2) didn't allow for any questions.

One of the struggles of any institution is assembling a team that truly "gets" the mission of the organization. It seems to me this struggle is compounded by the challenges many of our organizations have with procuring substantive funding. And unfortunately, we tend to enter into a self-fulfilling cycle where we don't feel like we can recruit the type of employee that we'd like to hire and end up with a number of individuals who are merely content with clocking in and out, rather than invested team members who are willing to use their talents to contribute to the overall cause.

So as Susie's post demonstrates, it is incredibly important that we do our best to make sure that we are hiring quality individuals and then giving them the subsequent training they need to be an asset to our organization...not a detriment.

[Pauline Eversmann]

As the other half of the disappointed duo on this house tour, I want to add a few comments to Susie's spot on description of the tour. As someone who worked with interpreters for many years and knows the good, the bad, and the truly ugly in interpretation, the one thing for which there really is NO excuse is "misinformation." At least twice(when I could hear) this guide gave out false information. He repeated the old myth about women checking their petticoats in pier table mirrors and he didn't identify a painting as a reproduction but passed it off as the original. Grrrr.

[Jodi Larson]

I may be in the minority here but I do hear every single "um" and "you know" and "uhhh." This is just as bad as mumbling and whispering and just as distracting as bad jokes and lying.
With enough of those verbal pauses, even the most wonderful of tours and guides can come off as unprofessional and ill-prepared.
Tour guides of the world: speak like you mean it!

[Kristin]

Worst. Tour. Ever. I'll name it -- the Royal Naval Submarine Museum in Gosport, England. Ok, not a house museum per se, but a tour of a submarine, which is kind of a house museum for the Navy. Here's why I should have been interested: I had at least one relative who worked in the Naval Yard there and the guide had served on a submarine much like the one we were on. It could've been fascinating, but rather than hearing about what life was like on the sub, we heard the equivalent of the "point and tell" decorative arts tour. Ad naseum. There are only maybe 3 or 4 spaces on the sub, and we literally spent at least 30 minutes in the first space. People kept leaving. The guide had NO clue about his audience -- I wasn't even sure he was aware that people had left. But he played to one person on the tour who was eager to ask more and more arcane questions about the sub itself. If that man had been the only person on the tour, it would've been a great tour for him. (Eventually, he was.) But, for everyone else -- the guide had no understanding of his audience whatsoever. Nor, seemingly, any interest in finding out.

I tried to stick it out, but I finally left. The submarine, anyway. I had to wait outside, because that visitor asking all the mind-numbing, detailed questions about the sub? My husband.

[Nicole Belolan]

I can't stand it when guides talk about objects that are not THERE when it doesn't add anything to the tour's interpretative framework or if someone hasn't specifically inquired about an object that isn't on the tour route. Yes, there are exceptions as to when this may be appropriate. However, unless the house is empty, there is probably a lot to talk about that IS in sight of the group. The last time I experienced this myself was at Frederic Edwin Church's Olana this past August . For those of you who are familiar with the site, you know that the spaces are filled with objects of all kinds that there should be plenty in plain view to discuss in depth!

On the same trip, I had visited Robert Todd Lincoln's Hildene. Guided tours were offered only around midday, and I was visiting earlier in the morning. Instead, I had the treat of walking through the house myself. There were a few brief interpretative panels in each room, which gave me just enough information on the space's history of use. Then, I could look around as I wished. For some audiences, there is something to be said for the self-guided tour. I appreciated the chance to think about the upper-middle class (rather than elite, of which I have seen plenty in the recent past) furnishings and spaces without interruption.

This reminds me of some awful gallery tours and another point about what not to do -- <> This happened to a friend me at the PA Academy of the Fine Arts: . Not only did I feel threatened at the outset (although, I was not the one who accepted - my friend did before I could say thanks but no thanks since I smelled the danger a mile away), but the tour itself was way too long and full of questionable interpretation. There were a few other people who had joined the tour and left in the middle of it. I tried to signal a desire to look around without "guidance" by spending a lot of close-up time with some of the paintings, but this didn't give the guide the hint. My friend and I were too polite to say anything until, about 1 hour into the tour(and this isn't what I could call a large museum), I thanked the guide and said that we wanted to look around alone for a while. She rebutted with, "well, we're almost finished - just a few more galleries." About 15 minutes later, we were free, but I think we would have stayed longer and would have enjoyed the art more had we not had such a miserable tour.

[Laura Roberts]

I totally agree with Nicole. I really hate it when guides tell me that a wonderful object is missing - on loan, out for conservation, etc. - I just makes me feel bad. Or that a room is closed for some reason and it's really great.

Yes, the cliches are the worst - naive portraits with the bodies painted in the winter and the heads added later; short beds because people were so short; swooning chairs because women wore stays, etc. I remember a guide at Deerfield who relished every time she got to say "Spittlesfield silk", as if she was inordinately proud to be able to pronounce it.

I love the narrative panels at the Ballentine House at the Newark Museum... they tell a great story, room by room, about the family and various little social dramas... place of women, social status of African Americans, prejudice, etc.

[Mrs Auger]

I would like to compliment the Edmondston-Alston House in Charleston SC for their interpretation of Christmas 1860 (Charleston's last opulent Christmas before the start of the war in 1861). They recruit local reenactors in period dress to portray people who lived in the house at that time. Each room is a peek into history as the men argue politics and the women prepare for Christmas Day. A local couple sing Christmas carols and spirituals in the courtyard. For only $20.00 we were transformed back into time. The children loved the story about the Christmas Gift a game played on the Masters by the slaves. We all enjoyed the hot cider at the end. We go every year as the staff change it just a little to keep it interesting. We even enjoyed our wait in line as military men from the early 1800's entertained us with their thoughts on SC's recent session from the union (Dec 20, 1860). If you are in the area in early Dec do not miss this wonderful opportunity to peek into history.
Mrs. Auger in SC

[Mary Ann Colopy]

A trained skillful interpreter is the only way to address the needs of a large group. Daily I experience groups of 50 people trying to look at four signs, wheelchairs needing assistnace, children requiring age appropriate suggestions, history buffs wanting to discuss politics and prurient questions. Every tour needs time for the group to socialize and process information.

[Lois Stoehr]

A house tour I took at one plantation outside of Williamsburg, VA was a virtual catalogue of things guides should not do: If a guide chooses to wear period garb, it should be accurate--not pseudo-Renaissance for an 18th-century house. Also, guides should not carelessly caress collection objects on a tour--especially after reminding their guests not to touch. A common refrain throughout any tour should not be "and that's where that saying came from," which I've heard on more than one tour about more than one aphorism. Finally, the guide should assume the audience is interested and reasonably intelligent, then strike the right balance between giving complex historical information and spelling aloud every single word.

[Marne Bariso]

This entry and comments have been very compelling for me to read since one of my main duties is training our gallery interpreters. I'm wondering if I could use these posts somehow in our upcoming training seminar. I'd be surprised if some of the supervisors of the tour guides mentioned weren't aware of the guides' quirks, shortfallings, and bad habits. Evaluation of volunteer tour guides (I'm presuming many of these described tour guides are volunteers?)is difficult, time consuming, and a sensitive issue. We have just begun a system to evaluate the gallery interpreters at our museum, so we are on our way aiming to correct bad habits out on the floor, but I know some places don't have such a system at all. Imagine the moment with a volunteer tour guide where you have to tell them their sense of humor (their "personality?") is inappropriate, or telling someone they have b.o. (I've had to deal with both of these issues). And, handling a tour participant who seems unaware of tour-goer ettiquette (e.g. asking too many questions) can be challenging--risking offending one visitor for the sake of the rest is not necessarily an easy decision to make in the middle of the tour. I've been training volunteers for years and still try to improve evaluation and strategies to train for these kinds of issues. Telling a volunteer to "be conversational" is one thing; getting them to understand the concept deeply and to use the exact right amount of conversation in a tour is another (a tour guide could be too conversational, no?) Anyone want to share some successful training tips?

[Stephanie Weaver]

I'd strongly recommend buying and using The Interpreters Training Manual for Museums, by Mary Kay Cunningham and published by AAM several years ago. It's all about training people in conversational interpretation, and you can actually copy the pages and use them for overheads (or scan them into PowerPoints).

[Amanda C.]

My honest thoughts as someone who has spent the last 4 years as a tour guide?????

If you're going to get rid of guided tours, what is the purpose of having a historic site??? It's nice to just be able to walk around the grounds and NOT LEARN ANYTHING...if that's what you want to do...but I personally enjoy taking guided tours for the bits that you DO get to learn that you wouldn't ever know otherwise. And yes....I, too, have been on some ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE tours (one at the Lincoln Home in Springfield, IL and one in Missouri would be rated the absolute worst), but I never walked away from one without learning SOMETHING, and for me...that makes it all worthwhile...even if you have to put up with the irritating little habits, including the ummmsss and uhs, not being able to stop in the middle of the "script" to answer questions without them having to start over, etc.

Anyway....

[Sarah]

It's not the guided tour, it's the tour guide! A tour guide can make or break the tour. A charismatic, passionate, intuitive and knowledgeable tour guide can make anything interesting to anyone. One of the best guided tours I have had the pleasure of taking was at Fort McHenry, National Historic Shrine in Baltimore, MD by Scott Sheads. He was funny, engaging, mysterious, knowledgeable, and frankly it was obvious he was enjoying himself and having fun. He effectively shared his enthusiasm for the Fort with his visitors, and in turn they shared the same enthusiasm. Unfortunately most historic sites are not so lucky to open their door one day and find a individual like Scott ready to give tours to your visitors. It takes training and practice and most historic site docent coordinator staff are not equipped with the right tools or authority to effectively train their docents.

Oh, and my two cents for improving a guided tour would be to remember to physically guide people. If your visitors are stuck standing still for more than 1 minute, they will start to lose focus on what you are saying, and instead gain focus on the fact that their feet hurt. Keep the group moving constantly. It will keep the blood flowing through their bodies and keep them alert and interested. If it makes your tour too quick, so what? More than likely, you will have sparked their curiosity to learn more and they will either go off on their own to learn it, or ask lots of questions afterwards. I think the most valuable learning moments I experienced giving tours was not during the tour itself, but in the more intimate discussions and conversations I had with a few select visitors after the formal tour was over.

Oh another fantastic tour experience I had was at the Museum of Russian Art in St. Paul, MN this past Fall during the Association of Midwest Museums conference. Unfortunately, I don't remember the name of the docent who gave the tour, but she was fantastic. She gave just the right amount of information to wet your appetite for the subject and leave you hungry for more.