As a Tour Manager, you are in charge from start to finish; whatever needs to be done is down to you, ordering coaches for airport transfers, checking in at airports and hotels, and also checking that if weather conditions change, excursions are operating as normal. Sometimes people become ill; flights are cancelled, or altered at the last minute, so thinking on your feet is a must. To sum it all up, Planning, Planning, and Planning is the order of the day, after all, the group are looking to you for guidance and help should things happen. This is when being a Tour Manager really tests your skills. Most of the group won’t even know anything has happened if you do a good job “behind the scene’s”. I know, on one trip, having got back to the airport in America, the aircraft had a fuelling problem, so took off 1 hour late, 3 hours into the flight, I was traveling with the group, 1 of my passengers became ill and fainted, just lack of food and not enough liquid really, then 2 hours later another fell poorly, as it was a 12 hour flight we were only half way, once the group had relaxed back to watching the on board films, and the 2 ill passengers had been given some water, and felt more comfortable, everything soon got back to normal. 1 hour before landing we were informed by the Captain, that due to a problem, the aircraft would land at Manchester for a quick repair, we touched down, the engineers came and looked, but,1 hour later, and we were getting off to reclaim our luggage, THEN, a power cut, so, no baggage, we waited for another hour and the baggage was finally brought into the arrivals hall, I had by this time been able to arrange a coach for my group to return home without having to go to Gatwick by the airlines coach. Keeping the people informed was, and is, my main priority in this and all situations.