Tour guiding at NRC-IOT

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Student Report, 2011-02-22

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Tour guiding at NRC-IOT

Doyle, M

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DOCUMENTATION PAGE

REPORT NUMBER

SR-2010-19

NRC REPORT NUMBER DATE

August 2010

REPORT SECURITY CLASSIFICATION

Unclassified

DISTRIBUTION

Unlimited

TITLE

TOUR GUIDING AT NRC-IOT

AUTHOR (S)

Mario Doyle

CORPORATE AUTHOR (S)/PERFORMING AGENCY (S)

Institute for Ocean Technology, National Research Council, St. John’s, NL

PUBLICATION

SPONSORING AGENCY(S)

Institute for Ocean Technology, National Research Council, St. John’s, NL

IOT PROJECT NUMBER NRC FILE NUMBER

KEY WORDS

Poster, brochures, radio stations, advertising

PAGES

iii, 8

FIGS. TABLES

SUMMARY

I found my experience tour guiding at the Institute for Ocean technology challenging, yet enjoyable as well as rewarding. You always had to be prepared to answer any questions thrown at you, which proved slightly challenging if work was being done on a project you were unaware of the details. Asking your own question to find out all you could was essential in order to relay that information back to tourists. I found that acquiring new information was very interesting and made my job constantly refreshing. The enjoyment of learning new things, meeting new and interesting people and working with friendly coworkers was the highlight of my experience. Being rewarded by gaining valuable work experience was just a byproduct of a very enjoyable employment.

My job entailed giving tours for the most part, but also included producing advertising techniques and spreading the advertisements across any form of media available. This included posters, brochures, radio stations, etc. Advertising is a really important part of the job as it garners a huge boost in the amount of tours. The more people know about it the more they are likely to come in for a tour. An underlying portion of the job also includes learning as much information as you can about the Institute and the work going on, so that you can provide that information on the tours. Keeping up on current projects as well as general fields of research that are worked on are a necessity.

ADDRESS National Research Council

Institute for Ocean Technology Arctic Avenue, P. O. Box 12093 St. John's, NL A1B 3T5

National Research Council Conseil national de recherches Canada Canada Institute for Ocean Institut des technologies Technology océaniques

TOUR GUIDING AT NRC-IOT

SR-2010-19

Mario Doyle

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1.0 Introduction... 1

2.0 Where should I start? ... 1

3.0 First few weeks ... 1

4.0 So you’ve learned the script... 2

5.0 Advertising... 2

5.1 Brochures ... 2

5.2 Posters ... 3

5.3 Public Service Announcements ... 3

5.4 The Big Sign ... 3

5.5 Other ... 3

5.6 Tips on The Speech... 4

6.0 Visitor Statistics... 4 Brochure

1

1.0 INTRODUCTION

I found my experience tour guiding at the Institute for Ocean technology challenging, yet enjoyable as well as rewarding. You always had to be prepared to answer any questions thrown at you, which proved slightly challenging if work was being done on a project you were unaware of the details. Asking your own question to find out all you could was essential in order to relay that information back to tourists. I found that acquiring new information was very interesting and made my job constantly refreshing. The enjoyment of learning new things, meeting new and interesting people and working with friendly coworkers was the highlight of my experience. Being rewarded by gaining valuable work experience was just a byproduct of a very enjoyable employment.

My job entailed giving tours for the most part, but also included producing advertising

techniques and spreading the advertisements across any form of media available. This included posters, brochures, radio stations, etc. Advertising is a really important part of the job as it garners a huge boost in the amount of tours. The more people know about it the more they are likely to come in for a tour. An underlying portion of the job also includes learning as much information as you can about the Institute and the work going on, so that you can provide that information on the tours. Keeping up on current projects as well as general fields of research that are worked on are a necessity.

2.0 WHERE SHOULD I START?

If you have not already done so, prepare an organization scheme that you see working for you the whole summer. Whether you like writing things down on paper or typing on the computer find a reasonable way of keeping track of things that will work best for you.

Keeping organized will prevent any misshapes from occurring, like double booking a tour or having too many people on one tour. A personal organizer worked well for me to write down all the booked tours, the number of people expected, contact information for large groups, etc. If your email is set up like mine on Microsoft Outlook than it is quite useful to use the calendar to stay double prepared and give you 15 minute notices before a scheduled tour. I strongly

recommend that you let Gerry or the other commissionaires know your scheduled tours and allow him be aware of approaching tours so they can manage to have things well organized.

3.0 FIRST FEW WEEKS

The first few weeks entails learning all the aspects of the job fairly quickly as you want to get started on giving tours right away. First things first, getting to know what it is you will be talking about. Derek will probably give you a tour first as an initial introduction to the tour material. Taking multiple tours on your own or asking a coworker would be useful as well. Many of the engineers and technician working in the different workshops and tank rooms will be happy to answer any questions you may have, so it is a good idea to use them as a resource of acquiring information on current project being worked on that tourists will probably ask about anyway. (see FAQ’s)

Giving French tours is a requirement, so I suggest learning a script in French right away. One of my first tours was in French, and in all honestly I got pretty nervous which made me practice it extensively, but the next tour being in English seemed so easy that I was grateful that I learned the French version. Remembering things like the Offshore Engineering Basin and The Model Prep. Shop was a lot easier when I learned the much more difficult French translations. Anyway, my point is that learning a script you can remember can be done in many ways it just takes a bit of practice.

4.0 SO YOU’VE LEARNED THE SCRIPT

Now comes the first wave of advertising that needs to be done as soon as humanly possible. Organizing contact information will be quite useful for this part. As a principle you should pretty much write down any places you put up an advertisement, for a few reasons. Most importantly it allows you to keep track of the places that may need more of something during the second wave, i.e. replenishing brochures. Secondly it will help gather statistics about the summer, for example, how many people found out about the tours by PSA’s (public service announcements). Lastly it comes in handy writing your student report. I have listed the different methods of advertising and the locations I placed an advertisement.

5.0 ADVERTISING

5.1 Brochures

A very good source of advertising, as they can be placed at just about any location where tourists visit or stay. Brochures are distributed all across town, as well as visitor centers in different provinces. In order to get them to visitor centers you will have to contact Nick Dawe

(ndawe@gov.nl.ca) who will be able to distribute a large amount for you. It is best to do this before the middle of May. Other locations for distributing brochures include:

Botanical Gardens Signal Hill

Railway Coastal Museum Arts and Culture Centre St. John’s Airport Johnson Geo Centre Mt. Pearl Library Hotels

The Marine Institute The Aquarena The Rooms

5.2 Posters

These are slightly hard to manage as they can be ripped down or taken off without notice, but you may want to put up several at certain popular locations anyway. Past summers, including this summer, did not show a great stimulation in tours due to posters unfortunately.

5.3 Public Service Announcements

I found PSA’s brought in a great deal of tours this summer, approximately 45%, and past summers have also shown strong support for PSA’s. Here is an extensive list of radio stations that willingly allow PSA’s:

K-Rock – 738-7625 Coast 101.1 – 754-6748 VOWR – 579-9233 VOCM – psa@vocm.com CBC Radio – 1-866-306-4636 Hits 99.1 – 726-5590 radionews@st.johns.cbc.ca Rogers Television – 1-888-764-3771 Oz f.m. – 726-2922

Roger’s Billboard – http://wwwz.webbillboard.tv/nfld/

Have a blurb prepared giving the bare essential information on the tours as well as contact information. Some of the radio stations will get you to record the announcements, and other will just get you to email it.

5.4 The Big Sign

A sign in front of the building will be set up to promote the free tours, which will account for a fair number of walk in tours.

5.5 Other

Calling conference groups, summer camp groups, adventure caravans, is a good idea to promote the free tours as well. You can find a list of all conferences in St. Johns online. Some of the

popular summer camps include Rabbittown community centre, and the Boys and Girls club of St. John’s.

5.6 Tips on The Speech

As a basic help guide I will write down a general outline of how I did my tour, although I encourage future tour guides to construct their own setup based on their preferences and knowledge of the Institute for Ocean Technology.

I first begin by greeting the people on the tour in order to get an idea of who they are. I enjoyed the summer camp groups as they had some interesting questions, but I strongly recommend making sure their older than ten years old as younger kids lose interest a lot sooner. I tried to make the tours feel personal and that the tourists were comfortable in asking me any questions, as their participation lets you know their interested and others will naturally be interested if others start asking questions.

The basic layout of my tours started in the lobby for an introduction, then a little walk to the Model Prep. Shop through the office corridor (the Fabrication shop was off limits). From there through to the Machine shop, out the door connected to the Ice tank corridor, into the Ice tank, out to the large hall where the pictures are hung up and finally ending at the OEB and Towing tank. I preferred showing the short video after the tour concluded as I thought people could connect better to what they are seeing as they just saw it in person.

A couple of anecdotes are included in some of the past write up, but what I did was research some of the current as well as old projects so that I could use something refreshing. This is because when I’m recounting it for the umpteenth time I still feel it is something I tell uniquely to this summer’s tour groups as oppose to old anecdotes recycled every year. Basically I try and make the speech my own, rather than just use what is given to me. I find this helps my image as the tour guide and gets people to listen in to what your saying.

Then, as I mentioned before, I like to end the tour by showing the video in the main lobby.

6.0 VISITOR STATISTICS

Total Tours: 95 Total Visitors: 736 Total weeks: 12

Visitors per week: 61.33 Tours per week: 7.75 Visitors per tour: 7.91

61% 28% 3% 2.70% St. John's Across Canada Ottawa Toronto 5

0

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40

60

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140

weeks

Tours

Visitors

NATIONAL RESEARCH

COUNCIL

Tours are offered from Monday to

Friday 9 am to 3:00pm until

August 27

,2010

Tours should be scheduled in advance. Parking is available for free, but is limited. For confidentiality some facilities may not be accessible. Cameras are not permitted on the tour. Children should be at least 10 years of age and accompanied by an adult.

Tours are offered to groups ranging from 1 to 15 people.The tour lasts approximately 45 minutes.

To book your free tour call

(709) 772-4366

or email

Mario.doyle@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca

National Research Council

Arctic Avenue

MUN Campus

St. John’s, NL

A1B 3T5

http://iot-ito.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca

INSTITUTE FOR OCEAN

TECHNOLOGY

WHAT DO WE RESEARCH?

Quick Fact s

opportunities for new technology companies Canada’s national

centre for ocean technology research and development Predicts and models

the performance of various engineering systems in harsh ocean environments

Test facilities for America’s Cup yachts, offshore platforms and naval vessels

The world longest Ice tank

An indoor simulated 3-D ocean

A 200-metre towing tank Fabrication and