Course Summary

Have you ever considered becoming a tour guide in your own city? 

In this four-week practical course, professional tour guide Joy Vandoske, will introduce you to the different types of tour guides and the knowledge and skills required to become a walking or site tour guide here in the Melbourne CBD.  

You will have the opportunity to lead a short tour at the end of the course and find out if tour guiding is a career you would like to pursue.  

*Please note, this is a non-accredited short course.

Currently, we have no dates scheduled for this course. Please contact us via email enquiries@cae.edu.au to register your interest.

COURSE OUTLINE

Session 1: 

Introduction

  • Discuss information and performance criteria that will be covered in the course
  • What is a Guide? Roles & Responsibilities. 
  • Research. Where can you find information for your tours?
  • Excursion – Melbourne Visitor Centre at Town Hall 
  • Short Walking Tour of the area

Session 2 :  

  • Safe Work Practices 
  • Risk assessment 
  • Show Social & Cultural Sensitivity. Identify issues that may cause conflict or misunderstandings culturally or socially
  • Tour Guiding and the Law – Professional Guiding Associations
  • Tour Guiding Insurance 

Session 3:  

  • Tour Commentaries  
  • Student walking tour practice

Session 4:  

  • Students to lead a tour for their classmates. 
  • Review of the course

About Tour Guide Joy Vandoske

Joy was born in Chicago, USA, & has lived in Australia almost 47 years.  However, she didn’t enjoy high school teaching and soon found a job cooking for camping tours for New Zealand.  This organisation lead her into a job escorting tours on the Trans-Siberian Railway and Kathmandu to London Overland Tours in 1979 & 1980.  Unfortunately, the company went bankrupt in 1980 when many tourists boycotted the Moscow Olympics.  So back to Australia where a colleague from the NZ company was starting a new course in TAFE – Tourism in Melbourne.  She joined the staff at William Angliss College and taught here fo over 30 years.  During her school holidays she would escort tours to China.  
Angliss Tourism Dept kept growing and soon the subject Tour Guiding was introduced. The teachers employed to delivered this course introduced Joy to cruise ship operators who needed tour guides for their Melbourne stop-overs.  The rest is history and she has been guiding ever since. 

Joy has also been employed by other tour operators in Australia, giving her the opportunity to experience many different types of guiding jobs.

Joy joined the Professional Tour Guides Association in Melbourne in the early 2000s, which is now the TGA (Tour Guides of Australia).  

Joy is also a qualified Savannah Guide, focusing on natural and cultural activities of an area.  

 

 

Last updated: March 31, 2025 04:58pm