RIGID trainings to get license and accreditation are seen as factors for the lower number of local tour guides in Davao City.
As of June this year, there are only 21 licensed tour guides when the needed should be at least 30 or more tour guides to cope up with the demand as tourist arrivals increased every year.
“It is not easy naman kasi, people think that tour guiding, the licensing, and the accreditation is easy. It is not,” Davao City Tourism Operations Office (CTOO) head Generose Tecson said during the Habi at Kape media forum last Wednesday, July 24, 2019.
“You have to go through the trainings and series of workshops with the Department of Tourism (DOT). After the training, they will assess you through an interview and mock tours like walking tours and bus tours, to see if you are ready to handle guests,” she said.
CTOO reported 1.25 million visitors in the city from January to June 2019, and the number of foreign tourists are seen increasing. This prompted the tourism office to encourage more licensed tour guides. However, there is a need to make sure they go through proper trainings which may have caused fewer individuals to stay until the end.
She said for a tour guide to get license and accreditation, more than 100 hours of on-the-job trainings is needed to be completed.
“It is not that easy because you are handling people and you are representing the city. You also make your guest follow the ordinances in the city,” Tecson said.
Meanwhile, she mentioned that having a licensed and accredited local tour guide for a group of foreign tourists has been included in the Davao City Tourism Code.
“We have a tourism code, when you have foreign guests here in Davao, kailangan yung tour na ‘yun ay may mga local tour guides because iba naman ‘yung kwento natin. So the tour guide accompanying that foreign group becomes an escort and the local tour guide becomes the guide of the group,” she said.
“If we say, they speak a different language, then the foreign guide should be the interpreter and our local tour guide will remain as the tour guide pa rin because our stories are different and it is not something others can assimilate just by googling facts about Davao City,” she added. (LHC)