The dog of tour guide Mirjan van Vuuren enjoys the winter sun with her neighbor in Morocco, perhaps he is now running on the beach at Essaouira. Van Vuuren herself left her home there and flew to drizzly Netherlands for work as a source and contact researcher at the GGD Northern and Eastern Netherlands. And sometimes she is a pet sitter at home. Van Vuuren: “All my income as a tour guide suddenly disappeared due to the pandemic and I could no longer loot my savings account.”
Van Vuuren is one of the many tour guides who looked for other work. With the new lockdowns and restrictions, the travel industry still doesn’t know where it stands. It is mainly the countries outside Europe for which travel organizations deploy tour guides and for which, with the exception of a few countries, code orange applies as restrictive travel advice.
Mirjam Dresmé, spokesperson for the trade association ANVR, says that the turnover of travel agencies fell by 80 percent last year, and this year is at least 50 percent lower than in pre-corona year 2019. That is the industry figure; for the ‘long-haul specialist’ it is more, she says. The losses in the sector are significant. And of the more than 14,000 people who permanently employed the travel agencies for corona, 30 percent have now lost their job.
The malaise is also visible in the membership of the ANVR, by far the largest representative of the industry. Two years ago, 294 tour operators were connected, now there are 283. The number of (smaller) travel agents has almost halved: from 936 to 490.
Zero hour contract
It is impossible to say exactly how many tour guides work for these Dutch travel organizations. They are not a separate profession for statistics, the work is seasonal, and many have a side job.
TUI, the largest travel organization in the Netherlands, works with two types of tour guides: tour leaders who travel with them, and tour guides at the destination itself. Spokesperson Anke van Nieuwenhuizen: “From the Netherlands we only work with tour leaders, mainly with permanent contracts. If a trip is cancelled, someone with a permanent contract will simply receive their salary.”
On the other hand, there are employees with a zero-hours contract, who only receive a salary for days worked. No travel means no income for them.
This applies to Sjoerd van der Horst (44) from Esch in Brabant, who works for Djoser, which organizes group trips worldwide. As a teenager he went to Egypt and fell in love with the region. “I wanted to see more of the Middle East and became a tour guide. Temporary, I thought at the time. Not only the region, but also the work turned out to be great and we are now twenty years further.”
With his zero-hours contract, Van der Horst was on the road for an average of seven months a year. He did no other work besides it. Thanks to low housing costs, he can get by on less than 900 euros a month.
Last year, Van der Horst thought that the trips would pick up again in the summer. But after a few months of WW and with winter approaching, he decided to look for another job. “I have now had many temporary jobs: from cleaning animal shelters in a laboratory to sorting mail at PostNL at night. I have never made so much money.”
Also read: A job as a tour guide sounds nice, but is not lucrative
At Djoser, all tour guides work on a zero-hours contract. That is why the company always advises them to do other work as well. They are certainly not a homogeneous group, says Nicole Vlieger, head of human resources and travel guidance at Djoser. “Most of our tour guides have other jobs. Some are in education and enjoy accompanying a family trip during school holidays. Another part is a bit more age-appropriate and has the time and sufficient other income to do something on the side. A last group is young and does the work temporarily to see as much of the world as possible.”
academics
Travel organization Labrys only works with academics as tour guides, from classicists and (art) historians to archaeologists and philosophers. They can tell extensively about the history, archaeology, art, culture or nature of an area, and with their knowledge are closely involved in the composition of the programs. That could be visits to Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, but a Galápagos cruise and a trip to the Amazon forest are also possible. Labrys has also suffered.
Director and co-founder Roel Geukemeijer says that his tour guides miss work, but that their income has not completely disappeared. “Our tour guides accompany about two trips a year. You can now see that the pre-university education’s are going to decrease travel again. Two-thirds of secondary schools resume classic trips to Italy and Greece. That is hopeful.” It also ties in with the trend that was visible last summer: more travel within Europe, less outside it.
The ANVR hopes, says spokesman Dresmé, that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will quickly adjust the travel advice for outside Europe, so that Dutch people can travel the world again. Then the need for tour guides will also increase.
According to her, attracting the European travel market is already creating a demand for new employees. “Colleagues, travel professionals who have previously had to leave the company.” There will be no shortage of them, says Dresmé. According to her, the tour guide has started doing something else until he can go on the road again.
Djoser tour guide Van der Horst looks forward to that moment every day. He does wonder whether traveling to ‘his’ countries, including Egypt and Lebanon, will return to the way it was. My target audience is mostly older people. Will they all still have the courage to take a bus or plane?”
Mirjan van Vuuren is already looking a little more sober at her old job. Although she became a tour guide for the adventure, not the money, the pandemic taught her a lesson: spread your income sources. “I have now obtained my massage diploma. When the borders to Morocco open, I will soon be a masseur in addition to a tour guide and I will have an Airbnb there.”
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