professionally guided tours is a huge benefit, and it gives communities an incentive to help sustain and grow the GORP guides’ operations. What are the benefits of professionally guided tours and excursions? When visitors have a memorable, meaningful experience on a tour, they tell other people about it, which brings more business to that guide or tour operator. This brings more awareness of and potentially more revenue to the community where the guide operates. Also, popular destinations like Oregon’s coast can draw so many visitors that local communities can feel overwhelmed if they don’t know how to manage and leverage the tourist traffic. Our guides design and lead tours and excursions that take environmental and social concerns into consideration.
STOR-certified or trained tourism industry professionals 200+
guided adventure travel, including special topics like wilderness medicine and first aid, customer service and group management, natural and cul - tural history interpretation, and sustainability.
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What kinds of partnerships should professional guides to develop?
come to us to learn how to operate a boat or how to fish. They’d come to us to learn how to deliver better service, to learn more about best practices in things like marketing and promo - tion, and to understand how to operate their business more effectively. For example, they might learn skills like how to talk to guests about the wildlife in and the history of the envi - ronment where they’re fishing. Another lesson might cover how to give guests the kind of unique experience that makes the guests want to refer the guide’s tours to other people. The programs also help us contribute to the eco - nomic development of communities in Oregon and other states—because professionally managed tourism activities are more sustainable, which leads to greater long-term economic impact. Why did you create GORP courses? We wanted to raise expectations in the tour busi - ness, because we’ve all had underwhelming guided experiences—like when the person leading the group sounds like they’re tired of their own speech
Economic impact of tourism in Oregon
A lot of guides don’t take advantage of all of the resources available to them. We help them under - stand how groups like destination management organizations, convention and visitors bureaus, and chambers of commerce can help them grow and promote their services. We also make sure that participants are aware of groups such as nat - ural resource management agencies that will keep them up to date on things like environmental reg - ulations or projects (like an estuary restoration) that could affect their operations. What’s next? We are developing a webinar series and case study video interviews with professional guides and related stakeholders to help share and grow their success. The GORP program has expanded and the core courses (Global and National) are open to any guide in the country. We’ve also gotten re - quests from more states for Local course content. (See “The World According to GORP” for course descriptions.)
When visitors have a memorable, meaningful experience on a tour, they tell other people about it, which brings more business to that guide or tour operator.
$12.3B
—Miles Phillips
or when the goal seems to be to “guide” you to the gift shop. In Oregon alone, there are over 1,400 licensed guides and many more tourism-related staff. But before GORP, there was no formal train - ing program for people in the industry. Our pro - gram was designed not only to train guides, it was designed to give them more visibility and credi - bility. If you book a tour with a GORP guide, you know you’re going to have a rich experience that you couldn’t create on your own. We also wanted to boost the tourism economies in the communities where GORP guides work. Being able to promote
How did you decide what to cover in the training programs?
We consulted professionals across the indus - try—including veteran guides and outfitters, educators, and tourism marketing organizations. I researched guide training and certification programs across the U.S. and the world and then tested various methods in the field. And we always get input from participants about how we can im - prove. We also aligned our program with Adven - ture Travel Trade Association best practices for
12 The NET Effect | Extension Foundation/NTAE
Extension Foundation/NTAE | The NET Effect 13
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