What does a driving guide do?

Essentially summarizes in one person the qualities and the tasks of a driver, a guide and a tour director. Drives a vehicle suitable for the purpose, kept in perfect order and equipped with the most modern comforts, which generally is his property. Composes for his customers a route, in order to maximize the time available to them and visit the most interesting places in the most favorable historical topographical order. Once on the spot he provides information about the site itself satisfying the client’s requests suiting their time availability and their culture.  Normally, a driving guide does not accompany their clients inside churches, museums, excavations and so on, but if the customer requires it, and without adding a surcharge, is ready to do so if the situation allows him to park his vehicle legally and safely  at client’s expenses.

Driving guide at work

If the driving guide is also qualified as official tourist guide, he can legitimately ask for extra compensation to accompany his customers inside churches, museums and excavations, and in this case the request is legitimate because, after he has parked his vehicle, the driving guide will take a different identity in fact exercising the legal profession as a licensed local tourist guide.

How does one become a driving guide?

One could say that when the horse was attached to the cart then was born the job of the driving guide.

It is certainly natural that a person, transporting another person on his means of locomotion, may be this a stranger or not, he would start a conversation and what is a more natural cue for a conversation between strangers if not the surrounding landscape?

 Certainly in ancient times the driver of the famous cart explained the newcomer simple things, like:  that was the river, that was the highest mountain in the area, that was the forest (…and careful, wolf!), and so on… Today we take our tourists in a modern sedan or minivan equipped with DVD, GPS, refrigerator, air conditioning etc, and we have much more to tell than the driver of the cart had, but this is how everything started a long time ago!

Horse'n'buggies in Florence

Of course we cannot say that it only takes a cart and a horse to make of anyone a nice converser, but it is also true that if an individual is prone character to entertain cordial human relations and he is proud of the country in which he lives, the game is done!

The rental car with driver business began when the world switched  from the cart to the automobile, time later, when the meter was invented, it started taxi business.  Some of the coachman became car drivers, but more commonly came, and still come, to the job of public car driver and car rental chauffeur, figures from the most disparate environments and cultures: beginning with the almost proverbial countryman from Abruzzi that after the Second World War sold his sheep and left his home and native land to settle in Rome and buy a taxi, to the graduate, who finds accompanying tourists around to be a more rewarding experience in life than sitting behind a desk.

Apart from the taxi trade, and wanting to see how the car rental chauffeur has evolved into a driving guide, we put an individual, from any other

Taxis

 environment, behind the wheel of a vehicle and put him in charge of accompanying tourists from the airport to their hotel in the city. We can see that if he is minimally paid to human relationships, and perhaps he even has a minimal knowledge of the language spoken by passengers, he will try to establish contact and start a conversation. During the trip he will speak with them about where to visit, the political situation, local costumes and put them on guard against possible risks. The first time. The next time he will be already prepared questions they’ll ask him. Then one day they’ll ask him to be accompanied around the city and he’ll discover that he doesn’t know it as well as he believed he did. Of course he knows the streets, and perhaps even knows which are the most fashionable shopping malls and night clubs, but when the visitor asks him what is that beautiful monument they’re looking at, he looks at it as if he saw it for the first time and realizes he knows absolutely nothing about it!

Graduate driving guide!

Yes, he has driven by it hundreds, perhaps thousands, of times, but why is it there? Who did it? When? What was used for? So when he gets back home he sits at his  computer (years ago he would have had to stop at a bookstore to buy some books) and on the Internet he finds the information he needs. Then it happens to him again with another monument and he learns everything about  that one too. At the end becomes a habit: returning home after a day’s work he sits at the computer and tries to learn everything he can about his city. Then he buys books and he takes them with him when he goes to work, so that when he sits in his car waiting, he can spend the time studying… Studying? But it was he just a driver? Didn’t he just have to take tourists from  the airport to their hotel? Then how come now he spends most of his time taking tourists sightseeing and he almost doesn’t even go to the airport anymore? He doesn’t even wait to be asked questions anymore, he knows when the fatidic: "Excuse me sir, what is that?" He knows when it will come, and also knows exactly which words are going to be used.  So now, before he even turns the corner he begins: "Now, when we’ll have turned the corner we will see…"

Years have passed since that first transfer of tourists from the airport and every time he thinks back of his embarrassment when, for the first time he

Rome, the Colosseum

 was asked about that monument and he simply sat there with a dumb expression in his face, he just smiles to himself. Now he knows it so well that it seems to him he was present when they built it! He knows things now! And not only of his city. He traveled Italy long and wide, knows all the cities of art: knows where to stay, eat, park and… stop for pee! "His" tourists are very happy with him and trust him blindly. He optimized their time, has kept them away from any sort of trouble, and made them feel at home. But now when he arrives to a hotel to meet his customers and the concierge shows him to them saying: "This is your chauffeur!." He doesn’t like it anymore. He knows he is much more than a just a driver. He knows that in less than an hour those strangers will treat him as a friend for a long time and not make a step without him accompanying them or showing them where to go. He knows that at the end of the day they’ll thank him a thousand times, covering and embracing as if they were relatives. He knows that if he simply acted his "driver" role none of this would happen. He knows that if he did, if once in the car he would say: "Where would you like to go?" The answer would be: "We do not know, please take us around to visit the interesting spots in your city!"

Of course as a chauffeur he should respond that he just drives, that he should be told where to go and he would drive them.  He just drives the itinerary an

Driving Guides Association's logo

d destinations are the customer’s choices! That’s what a chauffeur would say, but he also knows that that would never work for him! He couldn’t’t say that. It’s not of him to say that. He cannot speak chauffeur’s words. He knows that the hotel concierge, when he suggested his guests to go on a driving tour, he also told them that he would get someone for them who spoke their language and knew the history of the city well and would not just drive them around, but he would also lay out the ideal route and narrate. In other words he would have been their driver, but would have been also their guide! Guide? Then why did he say: "This is your chauffeur??"Of course he could not say: "Here is your guide." A Guide is a another thing. A guide took a state exam to be able to say that it he is a guide. A guide to knows deeply all the monuments in the city and its province. A guide enters a museum or a church and talks for hours. A guide does not drive a car, his own yes, but does not take tourists in it. Maybe he thinks he would lose face if he did, or maybe he’s afraid that if he parks outside a museum when it’ll be towed away or stolen… However, a guide is a guide, and he’s not a guide. But it’s also true that he’s not a just driver. If he was only a driver, the concierge, or travel agent, wouldn’t trust him to take their customers on a tour, but just to bring them to the airport!

Official local guide in Florence

As we said, a guide knows deeply his city and its province, so if a tourist wants to visit a thoroughly an Italian city, admitted that he has the time, the best for him is to contact a local guide and, little by little, a piece a day, he’ll get to know the place thoroughly. But a tourist who arrives from the Americas or Asia, and that does not have the time nor cultural preparation for a thorough visit, is there a better way to tour around that rely to a driving guide?  With a driving guide tourists can visit a city like Rome or a wider area such as the Amalfi Coast or Chianti in one day, receiving the basic information necessary to understand the history and character of the places visited without going into details that many may find be boring if not incomprehensible.

Tourists from the USA

Mercedes Viano, commonly used by driving guides