Being a Tour Guide is a bit like being an Estate Agent, you can set yourself up in business with no qualifications. In many European countries you cannot do this. In Rome you have to be qualified and licensed to conduct tours of the Eternal city, you risk being arrested if you aren't. This is to protect the reputation of the city and also protect the visitor from unscrupulous people taking advantage of them.
No such laws exist in Britain, anyone can call themselves a Tour Guide. Liverpool has benefited greatly from being European Capital of Culture in 2008, with an increase in visitors. The Mayor, Joe Anderson, recently said that “Tourism is the only expanding sector in Liverpool” This has lead to an increase in people offering tours, particularly Beatle Tours. I am concerned that this has attracted too many people who are not fit and proper to deliver tours. Now this might sound like sour grapes but actually I am usually consider competition a healthy thing and recognise that there is a place for niche tours and different guides specialisms. What I don't like is shabby lazy operators out to rip off visitors by selling duff information and undermining the credibility of the reputable Tour Guides who are supporting the sustainable growth of the most important industry in our city.
One new Beatle tour is using as a business logo on the side of their vehicle a picture of The Beatles crossing Abbey Road. I would have serious doubts about using a Guide to do a tour of Beatle sites of Liverpool who uses an image of The Beatles in London. There are many qualified and knowledge Tour Guides providing a variety of excellent Beatle tours.
Many of the taxi drivers are now providing Beatle tours. This is proving very popular and has led to a big increase in the number of Beatle taxi tours. The taxi drivers that I know provide a very good commentary and do know their Beatle history. They are also providing a service at times when scheduled coach tours are not running. The visitor who is only in Liverpool for a short time can still do a tour, courtesy of the taxi tours. I am a little concerned that some of the private hire drivers that I have recently seen taking visitors on tours may not be as knowledgeable.
The long established Magical Mystery Tour run by Cavern City Tours is by far the most successful and popular Beatle tour with visitors. Visiting Liverpool, taking a Magical Mystery Tour is as much a part of your visit to Liverpool as taking a “Ferry 'cross the Mersey”
It was inevitable that others would want to set up a rival tour, this has now happened. On the 14th July this year the Fab4bustour was launched. Myself and several other qualified Beatle guides were approached earlier this year regarding the commentary and gave them some advice based on our decades of experience. This was genuine advice freely given that went unheeded.
I could not have passed comment on this new tour until I had taken the tour, so I took the 11 a.m. Tour from the Albert Dock recently. We did not leave until 11.15, which was not a good start. After introductions we set off.
The Cardinal Sin of Tour Guiding is to assume that the visitors know who you are talking about. It is no good just mentioning a person, you have to clarify who that person is in connection with what you are saying. It may seem obvious to the ardent fan that Brian Epstein was The Beatles manager, but to the casual visitor, it may not be.
In twenty years of taking Beatle tours I have never mentioned Florence Nightingale, my fellow passengers, who were all overseas visitors, were asking “who's Florence Nightingale?” so why mention her on a Beatle tour as she was on this tour?
When we are doing our best to improve the image of Liverpool, pointing out derelict warehouses and telling people they are the result of wartime bomb damage is not necessary. As are references to the 1981 Toxteth riots, nothing to do with The Beatles and the Queen drove up Upper Parliament Street, you lost me there. Twenty minutes in and no mention of The Beatles, I don't blame the person doing the commentary, they had clearly had no training in how to deliver a tour, you have to work at it if you want to be a Tour Guide. It is not just a case of picking up the microphone and talking, you need information and facts, plenty of them and the correct facts, not just some strange comments about John Lennon’s obsession with the number nine. Again not relevant on a Liverpool tour when you are not giving the information that is.
When the bus arrived at Madryn Street, birthplace of Ringo Starr, everyone got off the bus and walked down to see number 9. Back on the bus we took a long and pointless route to see the school that Ringo Starr did NOT go to, the building that was pointed out as Ringo's school was built in the 1970s. The school building that Ringo attended is on Aigburth Road and can be seen without driving round The Dingle.
The main problem with this Fab4bustour is that it is so inconsistent, the tour has not been planned correctly, if it was planned. When you can stop on Penny Lane, were there are nice shiny street signs, why stop at the unattractive painted on the wall sign? There is an island on the corner provided for visitors to stand on and get a decent photograph of the good road sign, so why not use it?
On a tour of Liverpool Beatle sites it is not necessary to talk about events that happened after The Beatles left Liverpool, visitors come to Liverpool to connect with the sites here of which we have many, too much of this tour is irrelevant.
The route taken is not suitable for a bus, I found the seats on the bus uncomfortable, you feel every bump in the road. When driving round Dingle, Wavertree and Woolton the traffic calming measures make it unsuitable for a bus. Add to this the low branches banging the roof of the bus it is an un-nerving experience.
The bus itself is adored in such vivid colours it looks like, what the Australians like to describe as a “technicolour dream”. Why, when people do something related to the sixties, do they feel it necessary to make it look psychedelic? That period of The Beatles development did not come until 1967 so is inappropriate on a tour bus of Beatles Liverpool.
If you are not a Beatles fan and you intend to run a Beatle tour and have no idea how this is done, would it not be sensible to take a Magical Mystery Tour and listen to their superb Guides? This has not been done and it shows.
I hold an Institute of Tourist Guides Blue Badge qualification and I am also a qualified Liverpool Beatle Guide, the qualification having been awarded by The Mersey Partnership after extensive training, including a 3 hour written exam. Apart from that I am a Beatle fan and that is a very important qualification when taking Beatle fans on tours of Liverpool. The guides on the Fab4bustour have no independent qualifications and, if any, minimal training, it is not acceptable to read from a script and call that a tour.
There are so many errors, such as Fr. McKenzie from the song “Eleanor Rigby” being buried in St. Peters Church, he is not. Strawberry Field being a Victorian Orphanage, it was not: the Salvation Army did not take possession of the original building until 1934.
The house “Mendips” on Menlove Avenue, were John Lennon lived from the age of five until The Beatles became famous, is named after the range of hills in Somerset, an area were John's Aunt Mini liked to visit. A fact not known by the Fab4bus representative, I will not describe this person as a Tour Guide. John Lennon's mother Julie died tragically, but there is no need to dwell so heavily on this or the other tragedies in his life.
The Fab4bustour promotes itself as providing “an entertaining look at the history of The Beatles, including trivia on their background you will not find anywhere”, it does not. It also states that it's drivers and Guides are “genuine Liverpool characters” does this mean to imply that other guides are not?
There is no requirement to gain any qualifications to be a Tour Guide and this I feel is wrong, with this very poor tour, we are in danger of damaging the Liverpool Tourist industry and, though I am loath to suggest it, feel that it is time to have Officially recognised and licensed Tour Guides, which would stop anyone just setting themselves up as Tour Guides or Tour Companies and taking advantage of the tourists that are now so important to Liverpool's economy.
The opinions expressed are mine and not those of clickliverpool.
