Marine tour guides complete training
There were no caps or gowns, but a graduation ceremony this afternoon was just as meaningful for ten people who successfully completed a special tour guide training.
Aldo Perez, Graduate, Specialty Marine Tour Guide Program
“Well first of all, it’s a great achievement. It’s the first of its kind and I think it’s long overdue. I mean, everybody is just getting tour guides licenses with no specialty or anything and when you go out there in the market you need to have a specialty because you can’t do everything. There is such a high demand and a very varied market, so you need to specialise in something. I think especially in the marine field, marine is a very fragile environment and the less you know, the less you can protect it.”
According to Director of the Tourism Training Unit Dr. Vincent Palacio, the course is designed to help the guides improve their knowledge of their environment and how to maximise its use while diminishing the harmful effects and practices.
Dr. Vincent Gillett, Dir., Tourism Training Unit
“That way instead of extracting from the reef system, they can serve as guides and hence still make income from utilising the system. So there was the need. The uniqueness of this program has to do with the three-tier approach. The prep programme, which was geared towards people who probably did not complete primary school and then these same people did the basic programme and a few from that crowd did the advanced marine training programme. And that’s the uniqueness of this program.”
“People want to upgrade their training. We have marine tour guides that were certified in the late 90s and are begging for refresher programs and would like to be certified at a higher level. So keeping that in mind we feel that the industry, particularly the marine tour guides will grasp the programme.”
Such training is part of the bigger picture for Belizean tourism. Minister Mark Espat says training is key as tourism grows each year.
Mark Espat, Minister of Tourism
“This advance marine tour guide training programme is very important for us because the reef and our coastal attractions is really the number one attraction for Belize and we have seen that repeatedly in the surveys we’ve done. And so education, conservation, quality of service are all critical for us to remain competitive. And so the Belize Tourism Board, along with the B.T.I.A. and U.N.D.P./G.E.F. and other non-governmental organisations have come together on this and on many other programs to try and advance the quality of tour guides that we offer to the visitors.”
“We have almost twelve hundred licensed tour guides now all over the country and we are seeing more and more they are becoming specialised. This is for example one specialty in terms of the reef and in terms of marine training, but we also are beginning to see other serious specialties, in caving for example, in horse back riding, and other specific areas or attractions. And so we are encouraging that because we believe that that will upgrade the overall quality of service and of course will end up with the conservation of these important attractions for the future of the industry.”
In addition to the ten marine tours guides, five instructors also received certification at this morning’s ceremony. In related news, the Belize Tourism Training Unit was today formally presented with a copy of the Advance Marine Tour Guide Training Programme. The course was carried out by the Training Unit, with funding from the United Nations Development Program’s Small Grants Scheme through the Community Management of Protected Areas Project. Patrick Jones for News 5.
According to Espat, 2004 overnight tourism should yield about an eight percent increase and an estimated nine hundred thousand people should arrive by cruise ship. He forecasts growth between twenty and thirty percent for this year.
