Tourism Matters
Tourism Matters explores careers, capability and the people shaping the tourism industry. Host Carmen Bold speaks with professionals, leaders and educators from across the sector about how they built their careers, the lessons they’ve learned along the way, and where the industry is heading next. The podcast offers insight for anyone working in tourism, considering a career in the industry, or responsible for developing the next generation of talent.
Tourism Matters
Birgitta March: Languages, Academia & Why Tour Guides Are More Important Than Ever
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Episode Description
In this episode of Tourism Matters, Carmen sits down with Birgitta March, a tourism lecturer, PhD researcher, and former international tour guide. Exploring a career that spans continents, sectors, and decades.
From guiding high-end clients in the US to interpreting across Australia and now shaping future professionals in higher education, Birgitta shares a grounded and insightful perspective on the tourism industry.
The conversation dives into the evolving role of tour guides, the importance of language and cultural intelligence, and the challenges facing the sector today — from workforce perception to technology shifts.
Birgitta also shares her current PhD research focused on bridging gaps between tourism education and Indigenous communities, raising important questions about how we teach and represent knowledge in the industry.
What You’ll Take Away From This Episode
- Why tour guiding is more complex (and valuable) than it’s perceived
- The role of language, interpretation, and cultural intelligence in tourism
- What makes a great guide - and why extroversion isn’t required
- The real challenges facing tour guides today (pay, hours, recognition, tech)
- How tourism careers can evolve across guiding, events, and education
- Why human connection still matters in an AI-driven world
- Insights into tourism education and student pathways
- The importance of ethical, community-informed knowledge in tourism training
About Birgitta March
Birgitta March is a lecturer in Tourism and Hospitality Management at William Angliss Institute and a PhD researcher focused on tourism education.
Her career spans international tour guiding, interpreting, business events, and education. She has worked across Europe, the United States, and Australia, guiding high-end clients, technical delegations, and cultural tours.
Birgitta’s research explores the social identity of tour guides and the role of education in shaping a more inclusive and informed tourism industry - particularly in relation to Indigenous communities.
Connect with Birgitta on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/birgitta-march-tourism-expertise/
Organisations Referenced
- William Angliss Institute: https://www.angliss.edu.au/
- Tour Guides Australia: https://tga.org.au/
Episode Chapters
00:00 – Introduction and episode overview
00:23 – Birgitta’s background in tourism and guiding
03:20 – Growing up in Belgium and early influences
06:40 – Studying languages and entering tourism
13:00 – Moving to the US and guiding high-end clients
20:45 – Transition to Australia and early tour guiding challenges
24:55 – Technical tours and interpreting across industries
30:34 – Moving into teaching and education
34:21 – Research on tour guide identity and belonging
36:25 – Key challenges facing tour guides today
41:12 – AI, tourism, and the role of human connection
48:45 – Transition to higher education and PhD research
50:24 – Bridging tourism education and Indigenous knowledge
55:43 – Final reflections on tourism careers
Welcome friends to the Tourism Matters Podcast, where I, Carmen Bold, explore the people, careers, and ideas shaping the tourism industry today. On this week's episode, I sit down with Birgita March. Birgitta is a lecturer in tourism and hospitality management at William English Institute, and she's also undertaking a PhD focusing on bridging the disconnect between Victorian TAFE tourism training and indigenous communities. Birgit, as you will hear, has had a lifelong career in the tourism and events industry and most specifically in tour guiding, which is always a very interesting conversation. Birgita in this conversation shares some of the research she's undertaken over the years, particularly around the identity of tour guides in Australia and also some of the challenges that tour guides are facing. And just a quick one before we start. I send out a short weekly email with industry insights and a few curated roles. If you want in, the link is in the show notes, or you can sign up on my website, carmanbold.com. Alright, well, I'll see you at the end of the conversation to give my two bobs and my key takeaways. Please enjoy. Beggita, welcome to the Tourism Matters Podcast. Thank you for being here with me today. Thank you for having me. Yeah, on this fine Wednesday morning. I'm going to kick straight into things. Just before we get into this conversation, uh I've got a couple of quick get to know you questions. So me and my listeners are a little bit more familiar with who Beggita Mutt is. So tell me, when you're traveling on the plane, aisle seat, window seat, or middle seat? Definitely window seat, girl.
SPEAKER_00Ah, oh yeah. Yeah. I don't mind. Um yeah. I don't mind asking people to move. Yeah. To move over so I can go to the bathroom or something. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You are my very, very first guest that said that. Everyone is like, oh no, God, I just feel too uncomfortable asking people to move. So I just go with the aisle. But you've got no problem. That's great.
SPEAKER_00No, because it's just so amazing flying over the Middle East or flying over Australia. Well, not over the Middle East now, obviously, but or flying over Australia and just seeing those amazing landscapes. I I love it.
SPEAKER_01Ah, yeah, okay. I must agree. Um, all right. And when you are on holiday and you're at your hotel buffet breakfast, what's going on Birgita's plate? What are we what are we headed for?
SPEAKER_00Love fresh tropical fruits. Absolutely love it. If I could start off with that and just put myself in the space, just it connects me to wherever I am straight away. I love it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I must agree, actually. Tropical fruit. And it's not the same if you try and do it at home and cut it up yourself as something.
SPEAKER_00It's juicier, it's sweeter. We just came back from a family holiday in French Polynesia. And just the fruits down there are so beautiful. The mangoes, uh it could even be an avocado. So they have equally a lot of avocados. I'm even happy to have that for breakfast, but something local that connects me to that space is for me the best way to start my day.
SPEAKER_01All right, well, that's a good healthy way to start your day. All right, so thank you very much. Um, we're gonna go back to young Bergita. Where did you grow up?
SPEAKER_00I grew up in Belgium, in the Flemish part. Um the province is like West Flanders, and I grew up uh I was born outside of Bruges and then moved into Bruges, which is a very big tourism fairy tale town. But it was a really good town to grow up with with the cobblestones and uh just the little markets and the little stores and the little uh yeah, I loved it. I really loved it. It was a very safe, it was not very multicultural, and I didn't really realize that when I was growing up. It was very Flemish. I think it's maybe too expensive for um immigrants to move to, but it felt just yeah, very cozy. Everything was small and cozy, and I loved it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I went to I I spent a week or so in Belgium, maybe 15 years ago. Yes, I did. I ate an awful lot of waffles and an awful lot of chocolate.
SPEAKER_00I don't know. I have straight teeth, but I have very bad teeth because I grew up eating chocolate for breakfast. Not good. You've evolved to fruit now. But it's a lovely historical place. Didn't know anything about but it was a great place to grow up in.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Did you travel much when you were growing up?
SPEAKER_00Um, no, not really. I had when we would go maybe across the border into um France or we might go to Luxembourg because that's you know everything is just so close. I went into Switzerland once and then I really didn't travel till I finished uni. Uh I didn't travel outside of Europe and yeah, till then. Yeah. Been to Spain, I've been to Germany and places like that. But yeah, never I had never been on an airplane till I finished.
SPEAKER_01Ah, okay. Right. So you finished high school, and then did you go straight to university from school? Yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Very flimpy way. You've got to go and do some serious education. So uh my parents kind of steered me into business interpreting because I was good with languages, and um they were probably right. I did love the course. I was very much wanting to go into travel, and my parents were like, no, you need you need something solid behind you, and they steered me into that, and I really, really enjoyed it. Um lots of languages every day.
SPEAKER_01Wow. So did you do languages in high school?
SPEAKER_00I did, yeah. I started off with um economics. Bad move. My parents um put me into a boarding school for six years, and they put me into economics and Latin, and I was not liking it. And so after two years, I'm asked to change. I had to wait three years, and then they said, no, no, no, now you can go into modern languages, which was like French, so I could get rid of the Latin and I could go into French, German, English, and so that to me was like so much more fun, and you know, I wasn't into repetition of my Latin words every day, and economics was just like way beyond me at 12 years old. So it was it was definitely my parents' choice and not really what matched my skill set very well. Um but once I got into languages, I really started um really liking the politic. Like when you learn languages in Belgium, you learn it differently to an Australian system where you really learn about the politics, the social context, the everything, the whole country. Then the language is like an addition to, or the vocab is an addition to your language um course. So it makes it really, really interesting because by the time you go to a country, you go, Oh, yeah, I know who the Tories are, or I know this in Germany, or so I really, really enjoyed um that. And I made lifelong friends in boarding school. It was really good.
SPEAKER_01Oh, great. Um you mentioned there that you wanted to study travel. Why did you want to do that?
SPEAKER_00I just wanted to, I just wanted to, uh however much I loved living in Bruges, I also really wanted to travel and explore the world because one of my friends in boarding school um had a very uh a family who was very well off and they would go to the Bahamas and I'll sit there with my old, you know, um, with my old Atlas and go, where is the Bahamas? Where's Key West? Where's all this? And I it just for me, it just opened up a world that I just went, oh, I've got to go there one day. And so I said to my parents, I want to go, I want to work, I want to work on an airline or I want to do something, and they're like, no, not serious enough. Because this is a long time ago. This is like we're talking 1988, but this is a long time, very different. Tourism really wasn't that big, you know. You didn't do a degree in tourism then. It's definitely not in Belgium, and so um look, I I don't regret what they kind of gently steered me into, but um, yeah, that's the reason why I didn't do it.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so business interpreting. So that's three three years?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, where you literally sit in um, you know, you have all your little cabins, and it's about the complete opposite of what I do in tourism. It's about you're closed off, you have your door closed, and you do ad hoc or simultaneous interpreting, and so you you have your headphones on all the time, and you just you know do it simultaneously, or you wait for a couple of minutes and then you interpret. And so I did 40 hours a week, and every 10 hours we did another language. So I did Dutch because in Belgium we speak Flemish, but that's not written. So I did Dutch, French, German, English. So every day, and I loved it, I really loved it.
SPEAKER_01It's just it uh So when you say you're sitting with headphones on, what are you listening? What are you listening to? Are you typing?
SPEAKER_00No, you just listen to you just listen to somebody talking to you in a certain language, and they'll say, Okay, now we're in whatever English, you know, translate from interpret from Dutch into English, and so you constantly do it whichever way you have to do simultaneously, which is as they speak, you interpret, or you wait a couple of minutes and then you do it, and you kind of give more setups. Are these people having meetings? Like, why what are you No, you're training to go so you're training to go into you know, conference center, or you're training to go into, you know, if you're lucky to go into the UN, or you know, you're training to be in a professional setting and sitting in a booth somewhere and being the official interpreter. Or you could go in locations with people and kind of interpret for them. And in fact, I've done that a lot in my tourism career later on. So it was actually really beneficial.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, this is yeah, this is an interesting little avenue, I think, here, because I mean, yeah, interpreting, yeah, that's definitely a niche in the tourism industry, or maybe not even a niche. Yeah, okay. We'll have to dig into it.
SPEAKER_00I have a big need for um language guides. We, you know, we're such a monolingual country, and but yet we have such a diversity of people who could really help out in tourism. And if you have grown up speaking it, writing it, and then, you know, working in tourism and using your language, people love it because they can communicate with you uh on, you know, quite a high level, but also you have the ability to talk to the different stakeholders you're dealing with. So if you're a bus with a bus driver or a hotel, or so you can speak the language of the land, but you could speak the language of your visitors as well. So I've always loved that part of my um tourism.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, this this is very fascinating. Um, all right, so you finish studying and then um what happens after that?
SPEAKER_00Um then my parents kind of said, okay, why, if you still want to work in tourism, why don't you go to Germany and go and work in a hotel? So I went down to Germany and I did what they call a Sprachenpraktikum, which is like a language apprenticeship. So you kind of improve your language for that industry. And for me, it was really interesting. Like the whole system they have in Germany is really good. Like you start as a roommate and you go work in the kitchen, and then you go all the different departments, and the sixth month you're at the front desk. So if a visitor comes with a certain complaint, you actually understand it because you've gone through all the departments, except for I was in Schwarzwald, Black Forests, and it was so cold, and the food was not something I like. It was like very heavy, stodgy foods, and so I couldn't wait for it to end because I had decided that hotels weren't for me, which was really good. It it opened my world to, oh, I thought I wanted to work in tourism, but really this is very different to what I had imagined. So it's kind of um I didn't look at that option later on, didn't want to work in hotels, however good the experience was, and I learned a lot uh in dealing with people and dealing with different departments, and it was really good, but it made me realize that yeah, it just wasn't for me. And so then I'm back to Belgium, and then by accident, actually, um, when I had already finished, the Americans came to Belgium asking for multilingual people. So they went to university where I had been, and somebody saw it and said, Hey Bigida, this is right down your alley. Do you want to go and work in America as a tour? And I said, Yeah, if they pay me, of course I will. And I didn't really knew what it entailed because I'd never really worked or I never studied tourism at all. And so, yeah, I went through quite a rigorous process. Um, the Americans put you through three tests to get there. So you have to do like personality tests and like, are you serious about wanting to work there because they sponsor you? And then you go through a language ability test. Uh, if you say speak this language, then speak it with us for a couple of you know, 20 minutes or something, and then they send you off for a couple of weeks and they say, Okay, now study the material that you will be needing, and then they'll do tests. So that's how I got to New York. Um, my first my first real job was um working with the people of the Concorde, remember the supersonic airplanes? Yeah, and it was really good for me and the QE2. So we had two big clients we had uh Concorde and QE2 Queen Elizabeth Tooth. Um, and they were really your high-end, what we call the discerning clients. And so that was like the best learning curve for me. I, if you know how to deal with that clientele, you could deal with a lot of um, a lot of different clients. So it was really the bar was really high straight away. America is really good in training people, uh you know, their internal inductions are really, really thorough. So that was my first eight months, and I love New York, you know, coming out of a sheltered kind of little Bruges, and then you go into this massive metropolitan city, and they gave us a city apartment and they looked after us for transport. And so we just had the best time. Oh my goodness. And but we had to speak four languages every day. Um, it wasn't you could I couldn't do um any city tours because they have a special system where, as a tour guide, you have to be accredited to that particular city. But I can give tours from New York to Philly, for example, then from Philly to Washington, DC. So it's a very different system to ours here. So I did that for eight months, and I thought I'm ready for bigger tours, and then I did I went down to Florida and did more tours for 10 months.
SPEAKER_01So talk to me about um being a tour guide, not only in a region that you're not from, but in a country that you're not from. How did you find that? You're not the first tour guide I've spoken to that's yeah, landed in a new city and started guiding tours. So, how did you find that within yourself, kind of feeling like a foreigner, but still being expected to be an expert? Um, and I guess like the training obviously went a long way. But yeah, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think for me it worked in terms of having a really solid induction. So you would get uh the Americans gave me, you know, probably a mentor for the first couple of weeks where I was just shadowing uh people the whole time. Um, and then they really forced you to kind of read books and talk to people. And so that induction was really quite comprehensive. So I think it worked for me, but in hindsight, you are never as good as a local. You know, your ability to translate and be the interpreter is really what your strength is. But you know, what I knew as a 23, 24-year-old, I just didn't have the live experience of living there. I just a lot of things I would communicate with the driver and saying, okay, let's give this to the driver, let's just ask the driver. I would say, or I would say, let's get back here tomorrow and then go and talk to people and really find out. And so it was like accumulation of knowledge and just build up and just remember what people ask. And there is kind of your stereotypical questions that people will ask you. Um, so that kind of, yeah, you have a bit of a folder there with all kind of um knowledge and all kind of questions they may ask you, and then compare to other guides, and but I think my training there was really good.
SPEAKER_01And Beggitia, would you have described yourself as an extrovert at this point in your life?
SPEAKER_00I never did thought I did, but apparently I've always been a bit of a chatterbox. When I talk to my friends who are remembering me from abroad in school, they're going, No, what are you talking about? You always were comfortable talking to people. It's not okay. Maybe I was, maybe I just envisage myself being quieter than I was.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, okay. That's interesting because I do um I do think that is a little bit of a misconception in that if you're going to work in the tourism industry, you need to have an extroverted um personality type. And I definitely think there are some roles in the industry that call and that having that personality type can be helpful. But um I absolutely um will die on the hill that there is a place for every personality type in the tourism industry. And I would go as far as to say, including tour guiding, um, because I think when you have um the right training and uh belief in your own ability to deliver the knowledge, you you still don't have to be a super outgoing and rah-rah-rah type of person to be an excellent tour guide and really connect with the guests. Would you agree with that? 100%.
SPEAKER_00So for me, what it always is is if I know my stuff, my knowledge, I have the knowledge behind me, I can stand in front of 200 people, which I've done and be completely comfortable. But I will be really uncomfortable if I have to wing it in front of two, you know, discerning clients, or I just don't like it. I don't like, I can't fluff it, let's say. If I really don't know it, I I'm not good at that. And I don't think that people deserve it, you know, a visitor.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I don't think they deserve it when they come somewhere. I think they was tend to think like, what would my parents like when they go somewhere? You know, what kind of level of knowledge would if they expect that? If they don't expect it, it's great. But if they do expect it, kind of be ready for it.
SPEAKER_01Okay, yeah, that's interesting. Thank you. All right, so you head down to Florida and sort of change things up a bit. And um, how much longer how much longer are you in the States for? How long?
SPEAKER_00Um, so a total of 18 months. And then I decided that 18 months was was really good fun, but it wasn't my country. I just found it too parochial. The news, I found it too parochial. I just really didn't know anything outside of my state where I was living at the time, or sometimes just a village. And I was, even as a 23-year-old, it was just really frustrating to me where I couldn't hear anything, what was happening around the world. And it was uh yeah, I didn't like that aspect of America, or however beautiful some areas were, and however a good time I had everywhere. Um, it was just too limiting in that aspect. Because, you know, growing up in Belgium, you constantly have we have three languages in the country. So you pick up a cereal box and you have three languages on the cereal box. So you listen to the news, you could just flick it up to another language, and then I get to this country and it's just oh, actually, I learned Spanish in America because I thought this is a language I don't know, I better get a tutor. So, but other than that, I really didn't, you know, didn't have any exposure to another language uh on a social level and I I didn't like that at all. So then I moved to Australia for something different because I um met my husband whilst travelling. He wasn't a traveller, but I just met him travelling. I said, Yeah, I'll come over for a holiday and that was a long time ago now. No, he's Australian. He's Australian. Okay. And we
SPEAKER_01Did you move to?
SPEAKER_00I moved to Melbourne.
SPEAKER_01Melbourne.
SPEAKER_00Always been in Melbourne. I in the meantime, I have a brother who moved to Sydney. So I went and spent some time with him in Sydney. And Sydney, no one will say that, but Sydney reminded me of um Florida, where I just moved off from in terms of cockroaches. And I thought, no, I don't want to do this another another couple of months with cockroaches, not not happy. This is not this is not my city. So that was enough for me to say, yeah, Melbourne sounds good.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's so funny. I always love to, you know, dive deep into you know what what causes transition and you know in our tourism careers. And um cockroaches isn't one that I've come across yet.
SPEAKER_00So I I think not many people would think of it. They would say, like, oh, it'll be a spider or it'll be uh, but here in Melbourne, there's actually no cockroach, like not those big cockroaches. You have garden roaches, or uh, if you're really dirty, you might have a cockroach, but you don't actually have those ones. And we had in Florida, we had the house fumigated, and it was they were just best proportioned. So when I got to Sydney, I went, I can't do this again. So Sydney's off the card.
SPEAKER_01So we're staying in Melbourne. Yep. And what did you do when you came when you got to Australia? Yep.
SPEAKER_00So I just thought, ah, uh I opened, I best we opened a newspaper and it said multilingual garden. I went, that's easy, I'm not even looking for a job. So I got thrown into a camping tour, which was 31 days around Australia on a coach with 40 odd people speaking two languages. It was a nightmare. It was an absolute nightmare. I didn't get any training. So no training. I had um a tour, um, so I had a bus driver and his wife, who was the cook, who had not been told that they had to train me. So when I went on board, they just went, no, not paid for this. And I had two warring uh parties. So I had the old Dutch people and the old German people who were still thinking about the Second World War. And here's Begida as a 24-year-old with absolutely no tourism training behind me, apart from what I had had in America, and I didn't know how to deal with that. I did not have the emotional intelligence to go, guys, just let's be adults about this. Let's just concentrate on Australia and the beauty of Australia and just get on with that. And I just suffered it in silence every day, and I thought I'm never doing another camping tour again for work. And I haven't, I just never attempted another one. But I did, I did love Australia, so I thought, no, this is good. I want to maybe keep on doing this for a little while whilst I really sort out what I was gonna be doing. And so I did do uh a series actually, which was really interesting. Of uh I sat in Perth. There were 17-day tours with farmers and there were technical tours, and so we'll go around like to the Kimberley and we talk about you know uh fruit growing and we talk about artificial insemination in New South Wales. And I was literally the translation again, I was the interpreter talking about things that I'd never heard of. Um, to and and it really gave me an incredible appreciation for the farmers in Australia who are just so in touch with nature and the technology they used to to read the weather and and work through technology with the land was just it just opened my eyes to a whole new, you know, area that I never even thought thought about. So I really, really loved those tours and had dose for a couple of years.
SPEAKER_01It sounds like sort of the perfect storm for you, right, at that point in time. You know, you didn't there was no expectation for you to be the an expert. So you have this ability to interpret and then sort of see different parts of Australia and and learn at the same time. Yeah, that's it, does sound very enjoyable.
SPEAKER_00It was lovely. It was really and farmers are pretty easy going, you know. It's uh, you know, if something is five minutes late or didn't really matter. But it was a really snappy kind of 17-day tour of Australia, and I just really, yeah, I just really saw the beauty of it all the time. And then but then I went into advertising for about five years. Um again, it was kind of my love for languages, and I thought, oh yeah, in advertising, I think I might like this because they play with languages, and I really like that deeper connection to the English. Um, and look, I learned a lot of that in advertising. I learned a lot of uh yeah, different people's skills, and um, so I did that for five years, and then I thought, no, that the hours are if if anyone complains about hours in tourism, the hours in advertising are horrendous.
SPEAKER_01Right. So can I just double click on that? Why did you make that? Why didn't you continue tour guiding? Why did you decide to try? I know you just said about the language, but um seems like quite a big shift.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it was a big shift, but at the same time, I just always looked for things with languages and it came across my desk and I thought, yeah, let's give this a go. Um that might be a different career I'd never thought about, where um yeah, I just but again I didn't see that as a long-term. I think I got burned out after about five years of working some seriously big hours. I got burned out.
SPEAKER_01Um, yeah. And what what uh where are we now? Sort of mid-90s.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it was probably late 90s where I thought look, tour guiding actually sounds pretty, pretty good hour-wise, and I feel like I don't want to be locked up in an office um all day, every day. Um, because as a good European, I don't like uh air conditioning. And so I wanted to be back in the open and yeah, just and I love hiking and all that stuff. So I went back to tour guiding, but I also started discovering business events, and business events for me were kind of really a good avenue to use my languages, and it was a little bit more oomphy, like it had a little bit more depth to it for me. And um, so I liked doing like technical tours with architects, or I did tours with you know, chocolateers coming over from Europe, and we go from chocolate maker to chocolate maker, or we go behind the scenes at Fet Square, or um I did like economic delegations. I did I even had the King of Belgium coming over. Um I did like really interesting like ministerial tours, and all I was was literally I was interpreter. So make interpreter or more like sports people. I did sports tours where sports people would come here, and all I have to do is make sure that they're at the right time at the G at the MCG, and then go and make sure that they're at the restaurant at a certain time, and then everything was organized, but I was just double checking that everything was there and being the interpreter. So I did a whole range of kind of those tours.
SPEAKER_01Wow. Um, and so are these delegates typically like maybe traveling for a conference or something like that? Is that what you mean when you say business events? Yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. But traveling for a conference or a technical tour or yeah, economic delegations that they have a Danish one over here now in Australia. So those kind of things, uh, and just literally be the interpreter. It's really good.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, this is yeah, really interesting. And that's very interesting.
SPEAKER_00That's a lot of times people don't think of that as tourism, but that's that's the really the beautiful thing about tourism being so vast that you can move into an area where you really can use your skill sets and you know, go to the level of depth that you want. Like you could go on a city tour and know a lot about your city, but then you go on a technical tour and you learn about a discipline that you've never, you know, really thought about. And then you go into farming tours and then I learn about artificial insemination, and I go into and so it's just been such an interesting um journey for me. It's been really good.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, wow. Okay. So how long were you doing that? Was that full-time?
SPEAKER_00You were sort of running those um tours or uh not full-time because in 2000 I had my first son, and then 2000, so then I really went and worked when I wanted to work. And that's another advantage of tour guarding. Once you become a mum, you could really say, Yeah, I could do this tour, yeah, I could do this tour. So um I had three children, and then I basically worked where I wanted to work, and we had um like a French au pair in the house, and then we I just would work in her with her, and that was really beautiful. So that's a really good advantage. If you still want to work, still get some pocket money in and still keep your brain ticking. Um, yeah, so I really worked that in, but simultaneously, and then I um somebody asked me to go and work at TAFE, so then I thought, well, I better I don't actually have any qualification in TAFE. So I did my diploma in tourism. Um, and I had to do to work at TAFE, I had to do cert four in training and assessment. So I did that, and then I started working in TAFE simultaneously when I was tour guarding and um training at TAFE. So that was a good combo. I really like that combo. Working as a lecturer, yeah. So that was really good because you can take bring the industry into your class and say, this is what's happened, let's do a case study. This is what happened, how would you deal with this? Or I can get guest speakers in, or me taking them out to industry. And so all those stakeholders that you know, all your contact books, you really work them hard, but you really give your students kind of exposure to what's really happening in industry.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think that's so important. Yeah. Um, but yeah, I will I just do want to highlight there for the listeners, you know, that this transition into motherhood doesn't um equate to having to transition out of the tourism industry. Like there are many ways. Begita, you're here um demonstrating the way that you made it work, but there are many different ways to to make your career um withstand, you know, motherhood. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And it's it's fun because you really one day I even took I even took my son. They were so desperate for a tour guide. And I I remember I was on a tour, a French speaking tour with Mauritians, and they booked, they had a free day and they decided to go to a big tourism attraction here in regional Victoria. And I said, No, I can't. I haven't got my au pair, I have got a son, and they said, No, bring him along. So I got the approval from the tour operator to uh take my son to a tourism attraction. They loved him, which was really yeah. How old would your son have been? He would have been about six or seven, and he had like white, white, white hair. So they just loved uh the real you know difference, and he spoke French, of course. And so that was um, so yeah, not that's the only time I did that. But no, it's definitely easy to to marry kind of motherhood with I mean, I had two jobs and I really liked that. That's where I started noticing. I love bringing in industry into my classroom. I really like that kind of uh hand on the pulse, what's happening, not teach about something that's antiquated. Yeah. Um, and I really really loved that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so that's so important. Okay, so what happens? So you're tour guiding and teaching.
SPEAKER_00Yep.
SPEAKER_01And um, what happens from here?
SPEAKER_00Then I, in the meantime, I did an advanced diploma of events because one of the things that I've noticed is um when you work in tourism, the big under the big tourism umbrella, as an interpreter, I often would go as much into the event space and then back into the tourism space. So if I was on a technical tour or a conference, I was actually in events. But then if when those people would have a pre or a post-tour with their partner and say, hey, we want to go there or there, then I was in tourism. So I wanted to learn a little bit more about events. So then I did my diploma of events, advanced diploma of events. Um, and then I thought, uh, I'm just gonna do my master's now. So then I kept on studying a little bit more, and I did then tour guiding. Um and I really wanted to have a look at um, you know, the identity of tour guides in in Australia. And so I did something on the social identity of tour guides and looking at their cognitive, which is their challenges and their expectations, and then also looked at the emotional, their sense of belonging in the industry and how this because I always feel that tour guides are somehow seen as the underdog. Yeah, it's a it's a job you start off with, but you know, it's not serious. But for me, it's been a really good career in terms of it's given me incredible access to people and places and knowledge that is, you know, it's on par with any other teaching job I've done. And so I think I really wanted to dispel a bit of that notion of.
SPEAKER_01What did you find, Beggitta? What how do they identify the yeah?
SPEAKER_00So they really love their sense of belonging, is really, really strong. If you're like a a tour guard who belongs. So I did it on the professional association called, um, it was now called TGA, Tour Guards Australia, and their sense of belonging is really, really strong in terms of uh yeah, belonging because they all have the sense, uh the same innate sense that they want to learn and be the ambassador to their city, and it makes them really proud. Um, but also the sense of belonging that maybe um they were a bit of the underdog uh within within the tourism industry, and people really didn't, it was always a bit of an afterthought, you know. Oh, let's book the coach, let's book the hotel, let's book the airlines. Oh yeah, hang on, we've forgotten about the tour guides. And it was always the last minute, and so they did sense that, uh, but just the fact that they had a membership and they really um had the same interests made them overcome those um ongoing expectations that one day it's gonna get better. And then, and the challenges are still there, you know, there's definitely innate um challenges within the industry, and so I would be teaching that in class as well and saying, okay, here's the challenges. How do we deal with them?
SPEAKER_01Can you um can you talk to me a little bit for a minute about the challenges for tool guides?
SPEAKER_00Sure. So, I mean, it's come since then, it's come um some way, but like one of the challenges are um the hours that you may have to work. And again, you can decide not to work those hours. You can decide that you want to be a side guide working for a tourism attraction, or you want to be a technical guide like me. And you know, when I was a technical guide, I would go out for dinner, but after working, but it wouldn't be long, long hours like 16-hour days. It definitely wouldn't be like that. So the hours are often seen as a challenge. The other thing was um there's still a very grey area where tool guides fall in terms of paying superannuation, because you fall under the hospitality banner, yet there's no, there's still tour operators who don't really um pay superannuation in 2026. So that was something that I identify they identified then. Um there was things like um guides having to get on top of um uh technology, and they found like running digital tours would be quite complex and they didn't feel like they were up to date with that. Um then there was the challenge of yeah, how to deal with the different stakeholders uh within the t tourism industry itself, and you know, how can they get a bit of a better uh you know, better position within our recognised position? So these were like the big challenges uh they have, but that overall that sense of belonging was a a a really positive one. So people love it, and people love being an ambassador to their city and you know, feel great and just they they leave off that positive feedback that they get from their clientele.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, I mean at the end of the day that's what it's about, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's um oh wow, how interesting that those are still challenges. Um age.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, but it's it's definitely like there's enough of your speakers who dispel that notion that it's not a long-term career or um there is so much scope. And I mean, I'm I'm very one-sided when I say for people who are multilingual, but there is or, you know, even have a another language. It is so much scope in tourism to weave your way through the industry and and work in, you know, as I said, events, tourism back-in events, it works perfectly. And for me, education. So really I work across a couple of disciplines and it it it works perfectly for me.
SPEAKER_01Um, what do you think then? What can we do as an industry to help um the PR problem that tour guiding careers have and you know, um uh raise the awareness that it is more than just a summer job or, you know, something to do when you finish school because you don't know what you want to do?
SPEAKER_00Well, I think what you are doing is excellent because it really shows like all the different people of all, you know, the whole across the whole industry having made a beautiful career out of it and really being passionate about it. And I think if you tap into the people and yeah, generally all the people I meet in tourism are really passionate about it. It but it is definitely a worldwide problem. I went to a conference, uh, educational conference where people were talking about um tourism as well and the declining numbers of students wanting to tap into it. Um, it is across the world. So it's people not for some reason not either thinking that um higher education doesn't give them a degree in tourism. So it's got this funny notion that they have to do have to have a degree in somewhere else, or they think at the challenges, but there's equally other challenges and other industries. And honestly, advertising to me was more of a challenge than um tourism. So I think we need to get past those challenges and say, like maybe compare it to other ones, to other display disciplines and ask people, give your perspective of another one, of a of another challenging industry. Why did you go in like me? Why did you go back to that thing?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Oh yeah, that's interesting. I just sort of I have a bit of a theory that oh um well tour guides in particular, I have um a soft spot for in this theory, in that you know, with the rise of AI and and digital technology and we're lonelier than ever, you know, the research shows that tourists or travelers want to find connection to place and people when they travel. No, but AI, I know that we can put headphones on our ears or get Chat GPT to talk to us while we're walking around a new city or a new country and deliver information, but that's not what people are um looking for. They're looking for the connection to place and people. And um, so I feel like tourism overall, but particularly tour guides, are sort of a little bit AI proof uh in terms of a career. So this is a theory that I'm working on and collecting data on. But I don't understand why young people or young people's parents um in this day and age don't view the tourism industry as um a real option for a lifelong career given the uncertainty that many industries have at the moment with the rise of AI. Um, that was a little ramble, but have you got anything to say about that? Agree, disagree, none of the above?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I agree with um that notion that people view it that way, how you describe it. But I also feel that maybe AI will do our industry a favor and really will show that this is a little bit more um AI proof, because if I think about the travelers that I work with, we have an aging population around the world. The disposable income often sits in, you know, 40 years plus. Um, so you don't tend to well, I didn't never tend to work with people who are younger than that age group. Who may go to AI because that's what they used to. So there's still a very large aging population traveling around who are happy to, they've worked really hard their whole life. They want to have that, you know, one-on-one conversation with a local. So it may, in a way, maybe do as a service at AI, but there will always be a place for AI tours. And that's always, if you do a free tour, if you were to do a free tour and you just whatever, download an app or do it that way, awesome. That serves those people. But I think the aging population and all my experience and that of my colleagues is that people love that. Um that really that have have that chat, that emotional connection to people.
SPEAKER_01And I've mentioned this on the podcast before, but I was at Manato Zoo in South Australia with my son on the 1st of January this year, because we wanted to start the year with the animals. And you go on the coach and you sort of can hop on and hop off around the safari park. So you have a guide that welcomes you onto the bus and seats you and then speaks about the animals that you're driving past until you jump off at the next spot. And for one of those legs going through the cheetahs, there was no guide, and it was just uh recorded. You'd go through the gate and the recording would kick off and tell you about the cheetahs. Um, and I've got to tell you, it was that experience and just having that one little leg with the cheetahs and listening to a recording. I can't tell you anything about cheaters. Zero. I can tell you all about the rhinos and how last year there was two rhinos and now there's one rhino, and you know, the guides that was had their own personal experiences because they'd been guiding on at Minato for five years. So they'd seen the animals over the years. Yeah, I can't tell you a single thing about a cheetah. I don't know what species of cheetah they were or how old they were, or yeah. If you'd asked me before I'd got on that the coach that morning, I would have said, I don't really care if it's a human or not, just whatever. I'm I'm here for the animals. But um, being able to instill that um their own personal experiences um into the commentary. And also the the welcoming face and smile of uh tour guide to find you a seat on the bus. Um yeah, really highlighted to me the the stark difference between digital um tour guides, I guess, if for lack of a better word, and the real deal human tour guide. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00It was amazing. And you're right, it's being able to connect the visitors to the place by answering their questions that you have that ability that. I mean, technology is great. I've used technology as a tool guide where they have their headsets, they can stand 50 meters away from me, they can hear me. Technology is definitely helping our job in terms of, you know, aging population often has uh hearing hearing problems, etc. We are a noisy city, or there's a lot of noisy cities in Australia, uh, with the trams going past, you know, that technology is definitely helping us as well. But AI, yeah, is not being able to do tapping into what the visitor wants to hear from us and tapping in into something that our experience has shown us. So yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and that's really interesting. It made me think back to when I used to tour guide on the Auckland Harbour Bridge, and you know, I'd spend an hour and a half to two hours out on the bridge with anywhere from two to twenty people at a time. Um, I mean, depending on the group, you kind of have to read the room as a tour guide. Sometimes it was just all about the bridge and the technical aspects and the history and whatever. Sometimes we didn't even talk about the bridge. So sometimes, sometimes the whole commentary went out the window because the the visitors wanted to know what it was like living in New Zealand or you know, w how much I pay for rent every week. AI and digital tools can't provide that fluidity and flexibility.
SPEAKER_00That's exactly. I I used to have a problem with, well, I used to have my own problem thinking, oh, this group doesn't want to hear anything about history. So I would have certain cultural groups that go, but you know, don't worry about talking to us about the history. We're not really that interested in that. We just want to go shopping because they come from big island groups where, you know, I had a group from somewhere in French Polynesia, and their island fitted 34 times in a national park. And so the only thing these people wanted to do is go and see shops and go and see, they hadn't been in an elevator ever in their life before. So to these people, listening to history is actually not that important. So you need to be able to adapt. And I felt guilty thinking, oh my god, I have all this knowledge. But you know, once you tap into it, it's their experience. That's really what we're there for. We're trying to service them to the best of our abilities to give them the best experience. Just go shopping if that's what they want to do.
SPEAKER_01So um, but yeah, yeah, it's amazing. Now sorry, I completely derailed the conversation there with lines of questioning. But um, it's very, very interesting. And I I yeah, oh anyway, I'll I'm not gonna derail again. So I kind of want to get to where you are today because you're in a very interesting position now. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So I transitioned to higher ed. Um, and so I'm uh teaching a Bachelor of Tourism and Hospitality Management. So kind of the same like TAFE, just a little bit more academic, but I'm still till very, very recently, I was still working in industry, um, being part of advisory groups, um, going out with like Tour Guides Australia to roundtable meetings, or uh, but so now I pretty much uh focus on my teaching in tourism. Um, so we train a whole lot of people um to work in, they could be working in hotels, or they could be working in visitor information centers, or they could be working for DMOs, um, for example, writing policy, or they could be working for a council, like a Fitzro council that has like an economic support unit, which is tourism. So they could be working for a whole range of things. So we uh that's what I'm teaching because I've just a year and a half ago I started my PhD now. So talk to me about your PhD. Um I am looking at trying to bridge the disconnect between the Victorian Tourism TAFE courses and indigenous communities in terms of what knowledge we um learn at TAFE colleges in terms of what is accurate and community-approved knowledge that our students can then go into visitor-facing roles in the industry and share with our uh visitors ethically. So I think there's a bit of a disconnect there. Uh and so I'm really passionate about our unique culture that we have in Australia, but I'm also looking at um yeah, but I'm also looking at where education can do better. So I'm not the indigenous communities as as as being at fault at all. I'm looking at what how can we do better in Victorian tapes? Very different to any other state because they have a small population of indigenous people, but yeah, so I'm just focusing on that.
SPEAKER_01Oh, wow. Okay, that's very interesting. How much longer do you have left of your pet?
SPEAKER_00How long is a rope? Piece of rope? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01A while, a couple of years, definitely. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's that's yeah, very, very interesting. I look forward to um seeing what you uncover. Um can I just ask then in your teaching role, what are you seeing then, I guess, uh um with students um coming through? Who's landing in your classrooms and and why are they landing there?
SPEAKER_00I would say most university courses have a high incidence of internationals. So I have very high numbers of uh in tourism, especially, I have very high numbers of internationals. If I teach in event management, which I sometimes do as well, we have a lot more locals. So it's really interesting how tourism um attracts um internationals. So lots of Asian countries, Mauritius, uh, Sri Lanka. Um sometimes we do exchange with European um universities as well, and so we'll have a couple of exchange students.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, a bit of a mixture of Birgitta, why do they why do they come to Australia to study tourism?
SPEAKER_00I think it's just um we obviously do a very good job in advertising, you know, our our level of education and our hopefully the calibre of staff that we have, like people who are really on the ground, who can work on the ground and then share that knowledge. So I think uh where I work, we're all really hands-on, we all have oodles of industry experience, and we can really share our passion for the industry and our knowledge. And so we could tap into all our industry contacts and we can take them out to industry. And I think we understand uh we we don't hide from the challenges in the industry, we really try and give them case studies for tomorrow and you know, in the future, how how we're gonna address a certain role in the future as well. So we're all passionate about it to try and teach to that kind of standard, and we all get really well. And I think hopefully that's that creates like a bit of a word of mouth within the country where they come from.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00And um obviously the advertising tools are working well, and um, yeah, but I think Australia, um yeah, we we shouldn't be the underdog for education. We do quite well, I think, and you know, we have good standards and yeah, um, yeah. I think that's the reason.
SPEAKER_01And I'll just ask one final question. Do they walk into the classroom knowing that they've got a lifelong career ahead of them? Or um, you know, do they uh have they got an idea of what they want to do?
SPEAKER_00This might be a tricky question to answer, but what's the general sort of I think uh look, a lot of people who are 18 years old, they actually have a pretty good idea in mind in saying that. So some will come from, let's say, Vietnamese family of restaurateurs and they know they want to follow in their footsteps. That kind of path is already like decided by their parents and they're happy to follow that. There's other people who who tend to think they want to go into culinary or you know, hospitality, uh yeah, in hospitality or for example in hotel management, and after you go, No, I don't think I like this, but I'm gonna trial it another one through an elective, I'm gonna try another discipline through an elective and then go, yes, this is what I should be doing. So students are really savvy, I think. Um there's I don't feel there's a lot of dropouts. I feel yes, there's some movement, uh, and that's very fair because if I would have been put in that hotel management thing, I would have done the same. I would have gone, no, that's not for me. Um no, that's very cluey. I think students are quite cool.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Great. Um is there anything else that you'd like to touch on before we wrap the conversation up?
SPEAKER_00Um, no, I just look, I just think it's it's just an amazing career that can lead to a lot of unexpected angles of the industry that you may not necessarily um think of. And so don't pigeonhole yourself and saying, Oh, I'm studying tourism, therefore I'm only going to work in tourism. You could go into hospitality. And if you if you get a job into hotels, you just go and do one of those software courses, or they will train you. I think there's a lot of goodwill in the industry for people with a little bit of experience within the broader industry to to get them there um to perform that job, you know, to the max. But no, look, it's a great industry. I think we are fortunate to have this industry. Um and yeah, look forward to training a lot of other people, you know.
SPEAKER_01Well, Bergita, I um I'm gonna make an educated call here and say that your students would be very lucky to have you as their teacher. You obviously bring such a wealth of experience and knowledge and um you know relevant and current knowledge. So um lucky students. Um yeah.
SPEAKER_00I my passion definitely bring in the international angle. I've forgotten to say, like I taught in Timor, Leslie as well, and that was really good with the World Bank on and off like for two years. Wow. And then made me realize our uh our absolute privilege to have access to education without even thinking about it. So every now and then when a class looks a little bit bored, I might bring that up and say, Do you realize how lucky you are? You have a laptop, we have constant electricity, we have everything. Like don't take it for granted because it's not everyone's I think Asian people really understand that. But sometimes, you know, Australians kind of forget that privilege a little bit. Uh then I taught in in uh Saudi as well, which was really interesting for a whole other lot of reasons, but uh I truly love to work in NEOM as well. So yeah, I always try and bring a bit of that cultural diversity in all my classes as well.
SPEAKER_01And I guess, you know, that's a very real and critical part of our industry. The reality is people, you know, working in the tourism industry, you're not constrained by borders. Um, we can, yeah, we can move. And as, you know, so many of my guests, I don't think I've spoken to any guest so far that's only ever lived or worked in one country. So the the cultural elements and the cultural awareness, um, yeah, is very significant. And how lucky we are to be able to have the opportunity. Yeah. Exactly. All right. Well, thank you so much for I feel like I skipped half of your career, but um with my sideways questioning. But um, thank you so much. You've just got so much knowledge in um that was such a lovely conversation. And I'll be sure to um pop your LinkedIn profile into the show notes if you're willing. Um, if anyone would like to connect to you with you or reach out to you. Um thank you so much. Yeah, and you have a fantastic Wednesday. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00And um look forward to hearing it online.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, all right. Thank you so much. See you. All right, bye. Well, massive thank you to Begita for sitting down with me and speaking so openly and honestly about her career in the tourism industry, um, particularly as a tour guide, and also um the research that she's undertaken um for tour guides over the years. Um, I thought it was very interesting to hear uh the um challenges that are facing tour guides and the tour guiding industry uh as a whole. So um we will all continue to work together to make sure that tourism, events, and all of its many subsectors are seen as a reputable and viable career choice. Um I hadn't actually thought too much myself about um the role of interpreters in the tourism industry, um and I guess particularly in the tour guiding. Um so um yeah, it was very interesting to hear Birgita's uh experience as an interpreter. And I'm gonna have to do some more research now into um how big a role um interpreters play in the tourism industry, um, because of course it's an important, important part of um of this beautiful industry of ours. So um once again, thank you, Birgita, for being so open with all of your experience. And friends, if you enjoyed the episode, please be sure to share with your network. Uh, sharing's caring. Um, the more eyes and ears we have on the podcast, the more people will um understand our industry and um perhaps, you know, really see the industry as a reputable and a viable uh long-term career choice. So um I'd love to connect with you on LinkedIn. You can look me up, Carmen Bold, or on my website, carmenbold.com. And make sure you hit those buttons. Follow, like, subscribe, share, all the buttons, just hit all of them. Until next week, just remember that tourism matters, and I'll see you then.