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Guide Training 2013: On My Way!

Journeys Within founder Andrea Ross heads out on the road to reconnect with the people who make every Journeys Within experience a memorable one…

anna and andrea

The little map on my in-flight screen shows that we’re half way from San Francisco to Seoul Korea, the first stop on my flight to Guide Training 2013! When we first started Journeys Within Tour Company we realized very quickly that the guides really were the key to our success. Originally it was hard, we were small and had fewer offices and we found that we were often having to use guides we hadn’t met ourselves. While the results weren’t catastrophic, they weren’t the experiences we wanted to offer. We realized that our guides in Cambodia got incredible reviews, but in other countries, where we didn’t live full time, the feedback was not as consistent. We realized that not only did we need to have a local presence in each country, but that we needed a team of guides who understood us, the company and our guests — from this our Guide Training was born. Now, after almost 10 years, calling it Guide Training seems a little silly, I don’t train! Our guides are the best and my visits to them and the fun we have is more of a team building and re-connection than a training. It’s also a lesson in endurance!

Over the next three weeks I’ll visit over 10 different cities in four different countries, I’ll meet with over 100 guides, stay in about 20 hotels and visit a lot more. We are going to do our own version of Iron Chef Thailand with my Bangkok guides, explore Mai Hong Son and Pai with our Northern Thailand guides, plant rice with my Laos guides, bicycle ride, cook and have a soccer championship with my Vietnam guides and zip line with my Cambodia guides! Many of these guides I’ve known for the last 10 years, life has happened around us, but we are still able to get together and connect every two years and I feel very honored to consider many of them friends.

This year is a great adventure because Anna Baldwin, our operations manager will be joining me and it will be fun to have a friend along for the ride that is Guide Training. There has been a promise of gin and tonics if we inspect more than 10 hotels in a single day, but I think I can talk her into it even if we’re around 5!

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I will blog as I go, introduce some of the guides that have been working for Journeys Within for years and who make us what we are and about the hotels that we partner with that give our guests such wonderful service and attention. What I do is put together a puzzle, I bring in the hotels, the guides, the experiences and I put them together to create a picture that is that perfect trip for those travelers. I am not naive enough however to think that I can do it all on my own…each puzzle is only as strong as the pieces in it and many of those pieces are our amazing guides. I’m excited to see my old friends, to meet new guides and to share with them the challenges and successes of the last two years since we were all together last. I know that they all share the passion I have for travel, the love I have for Southeast Asia and the unending dedication to giving guests the best experience possible. Let Guide Training 2013 begin!

One comment on “Guide Training 2013: On My Way!”

  1. Have a wonderful time, Andrea and Anna! I’m enjoying your blogs immensely, Andrea.

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