Engaging Tour Guests Through the Prism of Art

As an organizer of group travel, you want your fellow travelers to have a rich and memorable experience. One of the most effective ways to achieve this is by integrating art—both man-made and natural—into the tour experience. Art and travel go hand-in-hand: it’s about connecting more deeply with a place, with yourself, and unlocking your own creative side and seeing the world through new eyes. Here are some ways you might weave art into your next travel experience.

Here’s a surprising fact: according to American Alliance of Museums, American museums receive 850 million visitors each year. That’s more than people attending all major league sporting events and theme parks combined.

So, if you don’t have a museum on your itinerary, you might consider adding one. You as the group leader can inspire your guests to have a more enriching time that bonds the group, just by creating an activity around the visit. Some ideas for engaging your group might be:

• Have everyone take a photo of one work of art that struck them, and after coming back together, have them say why.

• Buy some pencils and paper, and have your fellow travelers take a moment in an art gallery and sketch a work of art.

Cities are frenetic, exuberant places filled with life teeming out onto the streets. There’s creativity and art everywhere you look. Not just in museums, but in the fashion you see, the street art, food and of course the diverse architecture. Exploring a city is a great chance for guests to get “artistic” by engaging with what they see beyond snapping a photo or dodging taxi cabs as they cross the street. Some artistic ways to engage with the city include:

• Explore neighborhoods with street art. Most major cities across the globe have street artists using the walls of buildings as a canvas for some exceptional work.

• Do a Color Walk. This idea comes from Beat generation author William S. Burroughs. The idea is simple: pick a color in advance, and as you walk, only look for that color. It transforms a mindless, passive stroll into something intentional, helping you notice the unexpected parts of a cityscape you might otherwise never see.

You’re entering a forest walk. A hike through a National Park. The artistic beauty of these environments is of a different nature than an art museum—it’s all around. If your guests are lucky enough to have time in the itinerary to enter a natural landscape, you can engage with an artistic, creative mindset in the space. Some ideas include:

• Make “land art.” This is a concept in which you use found materials in an outdoor setting and bring them together to create a work of art out of the items. It might be stones, leaves, twigs, or anything else in the environment, as long as it’s appropriate for you to remove the items.

• Create intentional themes around the time outdoors. Engaging with the natural beauty of a landscape sometimes requires

• Invoke all the senses. The more fullbodied an experience is, the more we’ll remember it. The more you can direct your travelers’ attention and senses, the richer the experience will be