Why New York? – A look into NYC tour guides!
#WhyNewYork? –
As a center of fashion, technology, art, and what say you … New York City attracted more than 60 million visitors last year and is home to more than 3000 licensed tour guides! Some of them, are really, really interesting! I like to believe I am one of them as well.
This series of blog posts will hopefully enlighten the reader to take a look behind who they hire as a tour guide, or better yet; Why they SHOULD hire a tour guide and not mistakenly believe it’s not essential to a great NYC sightseeing experience!
>> Local tour guides bring authenticity to a destination! We are important! <<
I’ve been wanting to start a social media presentation of NYC tour guides who have honest and interesting stories of their life in New York. I wanted to know if they were born and raised here, why they decided to stay – or if they left, why they came back. Or, if they are from another state or country (like myself) why they made it a point to live in the great city of New York.
So I asked some questions and their answers might spark your curiosity! If nothing else it’ll give you an idea of who the guides I work with and can recommend are. – Make sure to check out our NYC Sightseeing offerings!
Also keep in mind that to be a NYC tour guide you have to be examined by the Department of Consumer Affairs. The test is 150 questions and while of course, we as guides don’t know everything – we want to always learn and we view our job and work as a true profession.
I’ll answer all the questions myself later on, but first I want to give a brief introduction of myself, in case you don’t know.
I was born and raised in Denmark. In 2006 I traveled to NYC for the first time, fell in love with the City and traveled back and forth thirteen times over the course of the next five years. In 2011 I permanently moved to New York to pursue my education. Over the years I’ve graduated, started a business and family and moved away from NYC (which I’m still debating whether or not was a smart move ;-)) and though I’m acclimated to living in the States I feel very strongly about New York and I know firsthand what it means to fight to make make NY home. So my #WhyNewYork is very unique – or maybe not. Hopefully you’ll find the reading interesting!
First NYC tour guide to be featured will be: Jeremy Wilcox from Custom NYC Tours.
Thanks for reading tomorrow! 🙂
Maria-Leena Kerr
The Danish Tour Guide
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If you’re a licensed tour guide in NYC and you’d like to be featured please fill out this form and I’ll make a post about you: https://goo.gl/forms/7KEEpIXv7KKP9hCX2