A Year in the Life of a Tour Leader – February

Or: The Month the Engine Starts (Quietly)

It’s late March.

I’m sitting in a hotel breakfast room somewhere on the other side of France, second coffee in hand, watching my group finish their croissants. Everyone is accounted for. No one is lost (yet). The next activity hasn’t started, and for once, I have thirty whole minutes to myself.

So naturally, instead of resting, I go backwards.

Let’s talk about February.

What does February look like?

From the outside? Still quiet. Still off-season. Still that vague limbo where people assume I’m somewhere drinking tea and “taking it easy.”

From the inside? The engine has started.

February is the warm-up lap before the race.

No full tours yet—just fragments:

• A first test tour

• A few walking tours

• A museum visit talking about maths and mathematicians (because yes, that’s also part of the job now)

It’s the month where everything begins to move again.

Slowly. Then all at once.

What no one sees…

February is reading.

Reading until your eyes blur.

Reading about regions you think you know.

Reading again because history has shifted, details have evolved, and your job is to be precise—even when standing in the rain with twenty people waiting for a story.

This year, I’m preparing new regions. Some I’ve visited. Some I’ve lived in. None of that matters. Knowing a place and guiding in a place are two completely different things, and one of them is a profession.

So I read. I update. I rebuild.

And at the same time, I prepare exams to upskill, I refine itineraries, I continue building my own touring company, I juggle admin, logistics, and the eternal paperwork pile that certainly grows faster than the French Alps… While getting surgery to fix what could not be fixed during the season. 

And all of this is still unpaid. At this stage, my bank account is no longer “on holiday. It’s on life support.

February is a strange emotional space.

You’re not fully “on” yet—but you’re no longer off either. You start slipping back into guide mode, testing your voice, your rhythm, your patience.

You notice things again. The way people listen (or don’t). The small anxieties of first-time travellers. Your own reflexes coming back. 

And you realise how much of this job lives in human calibration. You also realise how much you’ve missed it. Even the chaos.

February is when the industry wakes up—and stretches… carefully, like an old cat with back problems.

Colleagues reappear. We gather for pre-season meetings, seminars, training days—long hours of unpaid work spent refining tours, adjusting to shrinking budgets, and pretending we’re not all mentally calculating how long our savings will last.

And then evening comes.

And that’s where February becomes something else entirely. Because after the spreadsheets, the logistics, the “how do we make this work with less?”, we sit down together—and we exhale.

We laugh. Loudly.

We complain. Honestly.

We share stories we wouldn’t dare tell anyone outside this world.

But more importantly, we share what’s behind the stories.

The exhaustion that carried into winter.

The relationships strained by months away.

The partners who’ve had to deal with our absence, our fatigue, our “I’ll call you later” that sometimes never comes.

The loneliness of being surrounded by people all year.

The doubts. The financial stress. The “can I keep doing this?” moments.

Because this job doesn’t just take space in our calendars. It takes space in our lives. And for a few evenings in February, we sit across from people who understand all of it without needing explanations. No filters. No performance. No microphone. Just people who know exactly what it feels like to hold twenty lives together while quietly managing your own.

It’s also the month when suppliers start calling. Drivers. Local guides. Hoteliers. Artisans. They’re waiting. For confirmations. For payments. For answers that aren’t coming fast enough. And they call me.

Not because it’s my job—it isn’t. But because they know I’ll pick up.

Because in the middle of the season, when everything goes wrong (and it will), these are the people who will save my day without hesitation. So I step in. I reassure. I chase. I nudge the people above me to do what should already be done. 

Not out of obligation—but out of loyalty. Because this industry doesn’t run on systems.

It runs on people who have each other’s backs.

February is when the mental load doubles.

I’m reviewing itineraries that don’t quite make sense (Paris and Dunkerque in one day and then back to Paris at night? When was your last geography class?), calling new suppliers to improve tours, planning logistics for March to June, preparing for exams, building a business, and still trying to remember my loved ones birthdays. 

All of this while knowing that in a matter of days, I’ll be fully back on the road.

February is not about where you are. It’s about where you’re about to be.

February reminded me that this job is not built just on logistics.

It’s built on people.

Not the polished version of people we present to travellers—but the real one. The tired one. The stretched one. The one that questions, doubts, breaks a little in winter, and then quietly rebuilds itself before the season starts again. We spend most of the year holding everything together for others—timings, emotions, expectations, crises. We make it look seamless, effortless even.

But February is when we admit, at least to each other, that it isn’t. That we are not just tour leaders. We are partners, wives,husbands, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, children trying to stay connected across distance. Friends trying not to disappear. Professionals trying to remain passionate in an industry that doesn’t always take care of its own.

And yet—we come back.

Not because it’s easy. Not because it pays well. Not because it makes sense on paper. But because somewhere between the chaos and the connection, between the exhaustion and the laughter, there is something deeply human in this job that is very hard to walk away from.

A moment of understanding.

A shared silence.

A group that, somehow, becomes more than the sum of its parts.

February reminded me that we don’t just prepare itineraries. We prepare ourselves to show up again, for others.

And just like that, the season doesn’t knock politely anymore.

It walks in, drops its bags, and expects us to be ready.

And here I am… it’s 8:30am, time to put the signature smile on and gather my group.