We employ hundreds of guides a year on behalf of operators across Australia — overland trips, day tours and cruise shore excursions. Register your interest and we will hold your details for when an operator we work with needs a guide like you.
This is not a vacancy for one job. It is an open register. We employ hundreds of tour guides each year on behalf of the operators we work with, right across Australia, and the work does not arrive in a tidy annual cycle. A ship reroutes. A season runs long. An operator wins a contract in April and needs eight guides in May. When that happens we go to the people already on our register first.
The work
Our operators run guiding of several kinds, and guides on our books do some or all of it:
- Overland trips — multi-day touring, often remote, often camping, where you are the guide, the driver, the cook and the first aider, and the group is with you for the duration.
- Cruise shore excursions — meeting a ship, taking a group off for the day and getting every one of them back aboard before departure. Tight timings and large volumes of people.
- Day tours and short trips — regional, urban and specialist touring built around a particular place or subject.
Patterns vary. Some guides work a concentrated season and do something else the rest of the year. Some string work together across several operators. Seasonal and irregular patterns are normal in this industry and they do not cost you your entitlements — they just make the record keeping matter more, which is the part we handle.
Who we are looking for
Guiding experience, in some form, and evidence you can hold a group's attention and their confidence. Beyond that it is less prescriptive than people expect:
- Languages are useful but not required. A second language opens particular work, especially around ships. Not having one rules nothing out.
- Licences and tickets matter for some work — a driver accreditation, an LR or MR licence, a current first aid certificate, an RSA. Tell us what you hold; we will tell you what it opens.
- Accreditation is worth having and is not ours. Tour Guides Australia runs the national Professional Tour Guide Accreditation Program. They accredit your guiding; we look after your employment.
Be clear about what we are
We are an employment services provider, not a placement agency. We do not sell your CV around, and we do not promise to find you work. What we do is be the employer: when an operator engages guides through us, we hold the contract, run the pay and carry the obligations that come with it.
So registering here does not guarantee a job offer. What it does is put you in front of us, already known, when an operator asks.
What employment through us actually means
- A written contract setting out your rights and obligations before you start.
- Correct pay, on time, checked against the award that actually applies to you. There are six industry awards a guide might fall under, and which one depends on the operator — it is worth having yours checked rather than assumed.
- Superannuation paid every payday, not quarterly, with PAYG handled on your behalf.
- Workers compensation cover if you are injured or become ill at work. This is the sharpest difference between employment and an ABN arrangement, and the one guides tend to discover at the worst possible moment.
- Someone to ring when a payslip does not look right.
Registering
Email us with a short note about the guiding you have done, where in Australia you can work, what licences and tickets you hold, and any languages. Attach a CV if you have one to hand. If you are currently invoicing on an ABN and are not sure that is the right arrangement, say so — that is a reasonable thing to want checked, and we answer it for guides regularly.
We read everything that comes in. We will not pretend we can reply to all of it immediately, but your details stay on the register.