NEWS IN DEPTH | FACE TO FACE Guiding principles


The founder of City & Village Tours, Gyll King, tells Samantha Mayling how the group travel market has evolved over the past 30 years


Q Why did you set up City & Village Tours? A A love of history. I trained as an Environmental Health Officer but I was attending history classes and met vibrant, interesting people preparing for the London Blue Badge Tourist Guide course. I qualified as a Greenwich,


Clerkenwell and City tour guide and with the Enterprise Allowance Scheme, I set up City & Village Tours in 1988. I was drawn to the craft of


producing itineraries, surfing on the waves of what our brilliant museums and galleries put on. Raman Rai, company secretary,


has always been with me. Now retired, he comes into the office two days a week. The first tour I led was in


London’s Docklands. I remember the excitement of watching Canary Wharf Tower being built. We have taken an estimated two million people on tours.


Q Why the motto: “For groups who like to see a lot without walking too far”? A The first thing I was asked was: “Is there much walking?”. Thirty years later, some of those


groups are still coming and the question has changed to: “Is there any walking?”. The guiding comes first and


it’s arranged around the notion of dodgy knees and hips. A good tour on a coach should be like an interesting wireless programme. On foot, it needs to be as good as


history programmes on TV. We utterly refuse to be boring.


I’ve always used Blue Badge Guides and many have been with me for 20-30 years. We’ve set the benchmark for guiding. The immediate future of coach


travelgbi.com


Q What challenges do you face? A Our Blue Badge Guides are entertaining story tellers with a “stage persona”. Unfortunately at some attractions, we have to hand over to volunteer guides, and it’s a patchy experience. Parliament has also decided to


stop using Blue Badge Guides from October. There used to be group-sized


spaces at pubs and attractions but some venues don’t value group business so much, so we’re pushed to awkward times. There’s a lack of understanding


among some visitor attraction professionals about group needs.


Q What’s new in group travel? A Many newly-retired people do not like the idea of groups, so we have to deliver a ‘group product’ to individuals. For example, people could drive


� A love of history led gyll king to establish city & village tours in 1988 – and it still inspires her work today


tourism is those aged 65 to 75, who bought Rolling Stones records. We’re all getting old but it is a


different brand of old. Arthritis will still affect a lot of us, so our emphasis on walking won’t change but our products will. Our minds are different but our


hips are still the same. The core product of a guide


telling a story will survive – audio guides aren’t as good. Groups like being with a guide and in the company of others.


Q How is the groups market looking? A Every time we have a general election, numbers dip. Our customers are bombarded with economic doom and gloom


to a jazz weekend in a hotel and be taken sightseeing in a coach as part of the trip. Another new product of ours is a


We are all getting old – but it is a different brand of old


news so they tighten their belts, then three months later bookings bounce back. Now, we’ve had two general


elections and a referendum and no one shuts up about Brexit. When I started, I was selling to


people born in Edwardian times – now customers wear Per Una and fly easyJet, as they grew up in the 1950s and 1960s. Customers are more on trend.


Bargain Hunt-style treasure hunt, with clients exploring antique shops and experts judging their finds. It is attracting a younger audience, in their late 60s. History programmes on TV are


great as people are keyed into the stories, and we are thinking about cookery or crafting weekends based on TV shows. Ordinary sightseeing tours are


out of fashion – you need another draw, and there is a thirst for ‘behind the scenes’ and TV shows – such as Midsomer Murders and Downton Abbey. Another innovation is our ‘jam


buster’ tours which avoid peak times for traffic and meals at


restaurants. cityandvillagetours.com


July-August 2018 | TravelGBI 11


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