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Tourism
Industry in Bhutan
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Increasing
demand for tour guides
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The
Department of Tourism will be issuing more tour guide licenses this year
than in the past. The department has taken in 300 Class XII graduates for
its one-month annual tour guide training course. The course started at
the beginning of March 2006.
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A first aid class in session for tour guide trainees
Tourism
officials said that while licenses would be issued only to those trainees
who score the required percentage in the examination conducted at the end
of the course at least 50 percent of the trainees usually met the criteria.
In
previous years about 20 licenses were issued annually. |
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The
increasing demand for guides came from the increasing number of tourists
visiting the country, officials said.
To
meet the demand the department issued about 150 temporary guide licenses
during the peak tourist seasons. "Not all the licensed guides are in the
country when they are required," said the joint director of the tourism
service division, Kunzang Norbu. "They are abroad either upgrading their
education qualification or on training."
Working
as a licensed guide did not ensure full time employment, tourism officials
said, adding that working as tour guides in Bhutan was a seasonal job.
Tour operators losing clients to guides who later started their own companies
was one reason why companies were reluctant to hire guides outside the
company.
But
the popularity of working as a guide has been growing and this year the
department received more than 500 applications for the course. In 2005
the department received 200 applications.
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The
reason for the drastic increase according to some observers could be related
to the difficulty in finding jobs among the youth. It could also be because
the job was perceived to be lucrative, observers said.
An
applicant said that his interest in the profession mainly sprung from the
reality that the industry would be big in future and would be a good business
opportunity for him.
Getting
the license seemed more important than the training course itself, said
one observer.
While
it was genuine interest that made some people get trained for others it
was only a means to get supplementary income.
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If
people were doing the training for the wrong reasons it would not improve
professionalism in the industry, tourism officials said.
The
training, which began on March 2006 and specialises the trainees as cultural
and trekking guides provides brief lessons on subjects like history, religion,
iconography, tour guiding techniques, communication skills, first aid,
flora and fauna and driglam namzha. |
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At
present there are about 300 licensed guides in the country.
Contributed
by Kinley Wangmo, KUENSEL, Bhutan's national newspaper, 2006 |
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