One aspect of museum programming or interpretation that Visitor Experience staff are often involved in delivering personally is the guided tour.

Like many aspects of museum practice, guided tours have gone through peaks and troughs of popularity over the years. We are all familiar with the classic pitfalls of the guided tour offer: the monologuing tour guide, the overreliance on facts and figures, and strict historic-house hosts who seem to rule their group with a rod of iron (Vagnone and Ryan, 2016). But there are far more examples where museum tour guiding is done really well: and in these instances, we find that tours can be a great way to provide a personalised, rich and dynamic experience to your visitors. In this chapter, we will look at the pros and cons of guided tours, and ways to develop a tour – and more importantly, develop tour guides – to keep your visitors engaged and coming back for more.

Pros and cons of guided tours

There are pros and cons to face-to-face tour guiding, summed up in Table 9.1, but actually all the research points to them as being a sure-fire way to increase visitor satisfaction. In fact, many studies show that not only do visitors have a more enjoyable experience if they take part in guided tours (Huang, Weiler and Assaker, 2014, 354), they are also more likely to visit again (Weiler and Black, 2015, 92).

Tours can also provide a sense of security for visitors. Rather than having to decide for themselves which are the important highlights of a museum, a curated tour takes the pressure off and leaves them in the hands of experts. There's also a social aspect to this security. Group activities provide opportunities to encounter the new and unexpected – which for many is a key motivator for experiencing culture – in the safety of the collective (Schmidt, 1979, 443).

On the other side of the coin, there can be perceived disadvantages to guided tours. First is the accusation that tours are didactic: people talk at you, not with you. As a tourist on a guided tour, it can be easy to spectate rather than participate (Schmidt, 1979, 444), and slip into a lethargy of disengagement where very little learning or enjoyment can be gained from the experience.