What To Do if You Book a Tour With a Terrible Guide

In this month’s “Dear Eugene,” we look at your options if you book a tour only to end up with a less-than-wonderful travel guide.

Inspired by our intrepid founder, Eugene Fodor, Dear Eugene is a monthly series in which we invite readers to ask us their top travel questions. Each month, we’ll tap travel experts to answer your questions with the hopes of demystifying the more complicated parts of travel. Send your questions to [email protected] for a chance to have them answered in a future story.

Dear Eugene: While traveling in Marrakech, I joined a tour with the guide from hell. Not only was this person rude and unhelpful, but he also took us to dodgy places that left half our travelers sick with food poisoning! While I hope never to find myself in that position again, what are my options if I wind up on a tour with a horrible guide?

It’s bound to happen in travel—you book a tour, excursion, activity, or accommodation, looking forward to it because you’ve liked the description or have been told by friends it’s well worth the time and money, only to be disappointed with it at the moment.

Matt Dutile, a New York City-based photographer who travels frequently for work, told Fodor’s about a tour he once took at the Monte Albán archaeological site near Oaxaca, Mexico. Having not booked in advance, he and his wife hired a guide at the site’s entrance.

Ultimately, Dutile was disappointed with the experience. He felt the guide rushed them through the site, reciting a script that could have been pulled from Wikipedia, and bid them farewell as soon as they reached the far end of the site. If he had to do it over, he would have booked a guide in advance from a company he could check out other traveler reviews for, but he also noted that “it wasn’t a big expense,” and there wasn’t much to be done.

But what else can you do when that happens? Do you have any recourse? Should you stay on a tour if the guide isn’t to your liking?

Here’s What to Know About Tour Guides

First, let’s make some distinctions because there are different types of tour guides. On a multi-day package tour, there is typically a tour director or tour manager (let’s call them tour directors) who coordinates local tour guides and may incidentally lead some tours themselves. There are also tour guides who lead tours in single destinations for a few hours or a full day, and these can either be arranged by a tour director or booked individually by the traveler. In either case, it’s disappointing when they don’t meet expectations. However, expectations can vary from traveler to traveler. Let’s talk a bit about what to expect.

A tour director is responsible for ensuring that the overall package tour is delivered consistently with what was sold in the brochure. They’ll often work behind the scenes on logistical things like rescheduling tours or shifting itinerary items around to make for the most optimal experience. They’re also the point of contact for travelers who have feedback to share about any of the individual tours they’ve arranged. More often than not, tour directors will also accompany their guests on some or most tours in the itinerary because it’s also their job to monitor tour quality.

If you’re disappointed with guides on an individual tour arranged by a tour director, they’re your best point of contact for feedback. But they’re not mind readers—they work best when their guests tell them how they like their experience and how it might be improved. Top-flight tour directors with years of experience can sometimes resemble magicians in their ability to turn around a disappointing tour.

What Should Travelers Expect From Their Tour Guides?

In many countries (particularly in the European Union), tour guides are licensed by the government, which ensures they meet minimum standards of local knowledge, customer service, and product quality. Many of the country’s proctor-exhausting examinations issue a license covering everything from history to local cuisine, and many require annual training to maintain that license.

Several of the country’s tour guide associations belong to the European Federation of Tourist Guide Associations, which maintains a basic set of standards for all members. To paraphrase, tour guides must provide an objective understanding of a destination free from prejudice or propaganda, make distinctions between what is fact and what is local legend or tradition, act fairly with customers and local vendors, and endeavor to protect the environments where they lead tours.

When Is It Okay to Bail on a Tour?

Travelers could have any number of other qualms with a tour guide. Perhaps their English is difficult to understand, their pace is too rushed, or they’re giving information a well-read visitor knows to be factually incorrect. What can travelers do then?

The easiest way to handle the situation is to excuse yourself—but be sure to let the guide know you’re exiting the tour. Guides on group tours are trained to keep the group together, and in some countries, they have a duty of care to ensure the safety of the participants during their tours. Guides will typically count heads at several points during the journey, so if you’re going to strike off on your own, be sure to check in with them so they don’t look for you.

They may also be able to hand over any pre-paid entry attractions for which they have individual tickets so you can still enjoy them on your own. If an attraction isn’t individually ticketed (some of them bill tour companies on the back end) you may just have to eat the ticket cost if you have to buy a duplicate. In some circumstances (such as if you’re visiting a site that requires you to be escorted by a guide), they may advise it’s not feasible to leave the group immediately but should be able to say when the first opportunity would be.

Sean Finelli, CEO of The Tour Guy, also suggests keeping the guide’s feelings in perspective if you decide to exit a tour early.

“I’d encourage travelers to remember that tour guides are just people at the end of the day. People who are extremely passionate about what they do,” says Finelli. “It’s not easy to get a license to be a tour guide, especially in Europe, so tour guides take what they do very seriously. But all people have bad days, so if you have a bad experience on a tour, it’s more than likely the guide is just having an off day.”

Terry Dale, President and CEO of the U.S. Tour Operators Association (USTOA), notes that the vast majority of travelers are satisfied with their tour guides.

“USTOA tour operator members take great care and pride in choosing professional tour guides with the most appropriate voices to accompany their guests on tours,” adds Dale. “Of the more than six million passengers that travel with USTOA members each year, we have received [only] a handful of complaints from consumers.”

What to Know When Asking for a Refund

Refunds for tours you don’t like can be a sticky situation, and the topic should be approached carefully. If a tour wasn’t what you expected, it could be worth asking for a full or partial refund, but only if the tour contents differed significantly from what was promised or if the guide was flagrantly unprofessional (some extreme examples might be abandoning the tour group or getting into an altercation).

Other complaints, like not liking the pace of the tour or the narration, just come with the territory and should be taken in stride, suggests Finelli. He recommends considering private tours to give travelers more opportunities for customization.

Ultimately, it’s your decision to continue spending time on a tour that doesn’t meet expectations, but it’s also worth remembering that not all parts of every journey can always meet expectations—it’s simply part of the travel experience.