VUSSC/Content/Tourism/Applying Effective Communication Skills/Key concepts of communication

=Communication and key concepts=

=1.1 What is communication?=

First, let us look at how other people have defined communication.

You may look at this link from a wikipedia entry: definitions

You may identify the different key words used to define communication in the above entry. In this course we define communication as the act of sending and receiving intended messages. Effective communication implies verifying that the receiver has understood the message as intended and that a subsequent response is observed. It is something that tour guides do every day, so how a tour guide communicates is very important. We will now briefly define other concepts that are specific to communication in a tour guiding context.

=1.2 Concepts of communication=

Let us now look at some key concepts related to communication in tour guiding operations:

Effective communication: Is a reciprocal sharing of information and ideas of written, oral and non-verbal information according to a common set of rules (eg language, non-verbal communication, symbols). It includes the use of active listening skills and displaying an openness to other people's ideas and thoughts. When the process of exchanging information between sender and receiver is successful, it means they use a common set of symbols to which they both attach the same meaning throughout the process of encoding, transmitting, and decoding intended messages.

tourist: Someone who travels for pleasure and recreation, to a place other than where they normally live. The purpose of the travel and stay elsewhere could be for health, sport, holiday, study, religious, business, family, mission or conference reasons.

tour guide: A professional whose job is to lead or direct visitors in a country, while pointing out and explaining to the travellers and tourists different places of interest.

tour commentaries: are the narration a tour guide prepares and uses in order to explain and describe tourist attractions to a tour group, which includes giving facts and answering questions from tourists, as well as explaining local rules and taboos about the site.

Barriers of communication: are a range of physical, mental or emotional hindrances that can prevent messages from being passed on successfully between sender and receiver during the process of communication}}