Tourism ministry introduces courses for guides

Photo Courtesy: Unique Travels

The Tourism Ministry of India has introduced Tour Guide and Heritage Tour Guide courses for training and certification of guides. The duration of these two courses would be 420 hours and 330 hours, respectively and are open to youth in the age group of 18 to 28 years. Education qualification for the same is SSLC.

“Tourism is an important source of employment & foreign exchange earnings in India. It has great capacity to create large scale employment of diverse kind – from the most specialized to the unskilled and hence play a major role in creation of additional employment opportunities,” said K J Alphons, Union Minister of State (I/C) for Tourism.

Photo Courtesy: India Education

As per the 2nd Tourism Satellite Account of India (TSA) – 2009-10 and its subsequent estimates, the contribution of tourism employment to total employment of the country during 2009-10, 2010-11, 2011-12 and 2012-13 was 10.17 per cent, 10.78 per cent, 11.49 per cent and 12.36 per cent respectively.

The Ministry of Tourism, Government of India has formulated the guidelines for selection and grant of Guide License to Regional Level Tourist Guides (RLG 2011). As per these guidelines, the requirement of tourist guides is assessed region-wise including the State of Punjab, based on the inbound tourist arrivals, number of ASI monuments, available licensed guides, growth potential, availability of assignments to guides and all other relevant factors and is normally done once in two years by the Ministry through a pre-defined process.