Expert guide can make a journey memorable

By Ranjan K Baruah

The main task of a tourist guide is to make every trip valuable, enjoyable and memorable for tourists. An efficient tourist guide can make any place look attractive to visitors by upholding the cultural traditions and heritage of the place along with social customs.
Guides may work with local tourists or international tourists. Those who can speak foreign languages have more opportunity to deal with international tourists. One must be polite, gentle and expert in communication to become successful as tour guide. There are some formal courses and also special training programme who wants to be tour guides. There are some free and sponsored training programmes from tourism departments or ministries in different parts of the country.
Approved tour guides can find job openings with India Tourism Development Corporation and State Tourist Development Corporations in the respective states. Both the Union and state government tourism departments hire tour guides. In the private sector, tourist guides can take up full-time or part-time employment with tour operators, travel agencies, hotel and transport industry, airlines, cruise lines etc.
Apart from these one may work independently as an entrepreneur.
The Government of India has guidelines for selection, training and licencing of Regional Level Tourist Guides. The Centre has decided to continue the Regional Level Guide training course, including the refresher course, on a regular basis in order to meet the increasing demand for guides.
The Ministry of Tourism has notified the new guidelines for the selection, training and licencing of the Regional Level Tourist Guides in 2011. According to this notification there will be four categories of Regional Level Tourist Guides as per the following details —

i) General: There will be regional level guides who will be authorised to work in their respective regions on a full-time basis.
ii) General – Linguistic: Linguists with fluency in foreign languages (apart from English), such as French, German, Spanish, Korean, Russian, Japanese, Thai, Arabic, Hungarian, Polish, Hebrew, Chinese etc., as identified by the Ministry from time to time will be approved under this category.
iii) Expert Guides: In order to encourage scholars, specialists etc., in the fields of tourism, Indian history, architecture, culture, wildlife and other related fields of tourism, there will be a special category of Regional Level Tourist Guides known as Expert Guides.
iv) Expert – Linguistic: This category of Regional Level Tourist Guides would be scholars, specialists etc., in the fields of tourism, Indian history / architecture / culture/ archaeology / wildlife or other related fields of tourism with fluency in foreign languages (apart from English), such as French, German, Spanish, Korean, Russian, Japanese, Thai, Arabic, Hungarian, Polish, Hebrew, Chinese etc., as identified by the Ministry from time to time will be approved under this category.
The eligibility and educational qualification are different for all these different levels of guides. One may choose to do courses related to Bachelors/Masters in Tourism Management or Tourism Students, degree or diploma in tourism and hospitality, masters in archaeology.
For expert guide, one should be a Doctorate in the field of tourism, Indian history / architecture / culture/ archaeology / wildlife or other related fields of tourism. We shall publish more about tourist guides in our next edition

(Ranjan K Baruah is a career mentor and can be reached at [email protected] or 9864055558 for any career related queries)