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Interview
6 March 2016 2.00 h

'Tourists want a good time'

Every Monday at 7.10 pm, El Punt Avui TV airs the interview series Going Native. This week, Neil talks to Toni Bellido, official local guide accredited by the Catalan government. He provides a variety of guided tours in Barcelona and around Catalonia.
How did you be­come an of­fi­cial tour guide?
I stud­ied jour­nal­ism and his­tory and then went to work in an ad­ver­tis­ing agency. But I got fed up with going to an of­fice, hav­ing a boss, hav­ing no con­trol over my time, so I de­cided on a change. So I left my job and tried to find work as a jour­nal­ist. How­ever, I re­alised that jour­nal­ism is not going through its best mo­ments and some­one sug­gested I get a li­cence to be­come a guide. So I did the exam, passed it, and here I am. I started work­ing for agen­cies and then I cre­ated the group, Enjoy Barcelona and Cat­alo­nia, on the US web­site Meetup. I started to or­gan­ise tours with lo­cals, ex­pats and tourists, and now I com­bine my own tours with agency work.
How long have you been doing this?
I got the li­cence to be a tour guide three years ago and cre­ated the group straight away. It's a big group with around 7,000 peo­ple in it.
What makes Cat­alo­nia an at­trac­tive des­ti­na­tion?
The best thing about Cat­alo­nia is its di­ver­sity. It is a small coun­try but in only a few kilo­me­tres you can find many dif­fer­ent things. You have amaz­ing coasts, you have the cap­i­tal, Barcelona, which is a nice city with lots of his­tory and in my opin­ion an easy city to get around. And it's a cliché but it's true about ski­ing in the morn­ing and going to the beach in the af­ter­noon.
What are vis­i­tors look­ing for in Cat­alo­nia?
It de­pends but I get two types: those who want in­for­ma­tion, to know about the his­tory or the struc­ture of some­thing, but I also get groups spend­ing a few days who just want to have a good time. Peo­ple do want in­for­ma­tion but what is more im­por­tant is how you ex­plain it, while they are also there to make friends and have a good time.
What is the typ­i­cal size of one of your groups?
It de­pends but when I work for agen­cies it can be groups of 40 or 50 peo­ple, and when I or­gan­ise my own groups it can go from 10 to 50 peo­ple. Big groups can be dif­fi­cult to man­age but at the same time they are fun be­cause there are many dif­fer­ent types of peo­ple in them. If you want to learn a lot about a place, it is bet­ter to be in a smaller group.
What's the typ­i­cal pro­file of your clients?
With my own groups, the av­er­age is 30 to 40 years old, when I work for agen­cies the av­er­age is 55 to 60 years old. Of course, be­cause of my age, I have more affin­ity with the younger peo­ple, but I like work­ing with older peo­ple be­cause they ex­plain so many things. If you just stand there and ex­plain lots of things to them they get bored. But if you in­ter­act and ask them ques­tions and make jokes, it helps and peo­ple like that.
Do you have to do a lot of prepa­ra­tion?
At the be­gin­ning I would have to do a lot of prepa­ra­tion, but after doing it for a while I now have con­tacts and a net­work, which makes it eas­ier. But one thing I like most about my job is that it is a learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. When I started this I had two ideas: to work alone, with­out a boss and to be the mas­ter of my own time, and also to enjoy the ex­pe­ri­ence and to learn.
Do you think peo­ple ac­tu­ally know less about their coun­try than they think?
It is true. You could spend a life­time study­ing just Sagrada Fa­milia, so imag­ine that mul­ti­plied by every­thing in Cat­alo­nia. You'll find a lot of peo­ple from Barcelona who have never been to Tar­rag­ona, and peo­ple from Tar­rag­ona who have never vis­ited Girona. It's my case, too. Be­fore be­com­ing a guide I had never vis­ited Sagrada Fa­milia, and now I must spend about a month a year there.
Do you use guides when you're on hol­i­day?
Not re­ally. I might get a guide if I'm par­tic­u­larly in­ter­ested in a cer­tain cathe­dral or some­thing, but usu­ally I buy a book and I pre­fer to dis­cover the cul­ture or the city on my own.
Do you find that in the end every­where is just the same?
Every place is dif­fer­ent. Of course all hu­mans are ba­si­cally sim­i­lar but Cat­alo­nia is not the same as Eng­land. All places have churches, for ex­am­ple, so what hap­pens a lot is that vis­i­tors will think to them­selves, “not an­other church” so, as I was say­ing be­fore, the most im­por­tant thing is that they feel com­fort­able and that they have a great time. That is much more im­por­tant than whether the church is from the 6th or the 7th cen­tury, and in fact most peo­ple don't care much about that.
What about the touris­ti­fi­ca­tion of Barcelona?
I'm the first to com­plain and yet part of my in­come comes from tourism. It's con­tra­dic­tory but some­times when I'm not work­ing I just wish all the tourists would go home. Nowa­days, Barcelona has the same prob­lem as Venice or Prague, in which it is be­com­ing a bit of a theme park. It's dif­fi­cult t man­age and I don't know if there is a magic for­mula that would bal­ance out the sit­u­a­tion.
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