Tour guides welcome upgrading seminar

CEBU, Philippines - The Upgrading Seminar for Tour Guides by the Cebu Association of Tour Guides (CAT-G) will strengthen the work force of both old and new tour guides.

According to its newly-elected CAT-G president Judalyn Taghoy, the upgrading seminar also develops camaraderie and mentoring and learning among each other.

“We have both old and new tour guides and with the seminar, we encourage them to exchange ideas. Like there are new ideas that were not known by the old ones, so it’s the task of the new ones to share what they’ve learned as well and vice versa,” said Taghoy, who is also the National Federation of Tour Guides (NFTG) vice president.

After the seminar, the tour guides will get the accreditation license from the Department of Tourism (DOT), as the latter will now strictly implement the accreditation ID for all the tour guides across the country.

Earlier, DOT plans to appeal to all local government units (LGU) to create an ordinance for their areas to protect the legal tour guides and to eradicate the “hupo-hupo” or non-accredited tour guides.

DOT Region VII will also have strict implementation for all tour guides to have a national accreditation ID issued by DOT before performing their tasks. The tourism departmet also gives more incentives to the legal and DOT-accredited tour guides.

Rowena Montecillo, DOT-7 regional director, said they are appealing to the LGUs because of the growing number of these illegal tour guides because they don’t have any hold over those “hupo-hupo” or illegal tour guides.

Montecillo said with the new implementation, she’s confident that it would create a brighter and nicer image on the legal tour guides.

To further encourage their accredited tour guides even more, the DOT will give them incentives like closer access to the tourists and the pay will depend on the number of tourists that they will be handling. — (FREEMAN)