Top Thai Tour Guides Graduate
By Garry | May 24th, 2004 | Category: Business, Education, News Reports, Tourism | No Comments »
Published in Good Morning Chiangmai News, Thailand – June 2004
Top Thai Tour Guides Graduate
Silver Licenses awarded in North for First Time
Chiang Mai, Thailand, 24 May 2004 – Over 80 tourist guides from all corners of Thailand spent two month’s in study at Naresuan University’s Phayao Campus this summer, before graduating to gain their Silver Guide Licenses.
Studying an intensive program for international tourism including airline passenger service, Thai culture, eco-tourism & the environment, ethics & etiquette, geography, history, immigration law, Thai music & instruments, and other subjects, the course candidates sat exams every week, with eight hours of classroom time seven days each week.
Split into two groups based on target market core language, sixty of them studied in the English language stream whiles the rest studied for the Chinese market. All of the participants paid for the course from their own pockets.
Successful candidates are now licensed by TAT to escort tourists in every province of Thailand, including locations previously subject to separate training and examination such as the Grand Palace in Bangkok. Before attaining this license, each guide was restricted to their “home” province and each province that directly bordered it.
It is the first time that the Silver License course has been run in the north of Thailand. Previous attendants had to spend the summer in a Bangkok university, which made attendance more price prohibitive for provincial guides. It is hoped that the course will become a regular feature of summer syllabuses in Lan Na’s campuses, as all who took part now feel equipped to capture and better serve larger shares of inbound tourist numbers.
