5T Series III: The Unseemly Tour Guides

To date, I have been invited to speak to 3 batches of guide trainees. On every occasion I have gone to great length to impress upon the aspiring guides just how important they are in the delivery of “high value” component of the “High Value, Low Impact” tourism policy we have pursued since we opened up our doors to tourism in 1974.

I have time and again pointed out to the trainees that guiding is not a job - but a profession that will take them places. That the guiding phase in their lives is merely a stepping-stone to a secure and safe future. That it is a time when they have the opportunity to build network, acquire knowledge and skills and establish relationships on which to build their lives. But alas, despite all that, I have come face to face with some truly deplorable and woefully incompetent guides. Quite alarmingly, it wasn’t that some fly-by-night tour companies employed these guides - some of them were guiding for some of the top ten tour companies of the country.

Two evenings back I was in the company of a tourist group being guided by a young cultural guide (one of the Rotarian group members had wanted to meet me). The guide was drunk witless, either with alcohol or with substance, due to which he couldn’t simply comprehend what his guest was asking him to do. Worst, he had about him the foul stench of doma. Once in Punakha, I saw a guide sitting on a sofa in a hotel’s reception area - with his legs up on the tabletop, completely oblivious of the many guests milling around him. In Bumthang a guide was so drunk that he couldn’t remember why he and his single-person group were in Jakar! After great difficulty he remembered that they were there for a festival - but he just couldn’t remember which one.

The custodians of Bhutan's tourism industry - each of them seem to have failed to keep the guides on the narrow and the straight. The regulator failed to regulate and the MBO's were clueless about self regulation.

How did our guides get this way? At what point in time did they acquire such shabby and unbecoming attitude and behavior? In an environment where they have to compete with 4,244 other guides (as of today, there are 4,245 licensed guides), how did they allow themselves to degenerate to this level of un-employability? And yet, they are obviously getting employed! How and why? I can think of following reasons:

1.  They are available at cheap rates - commensurate with their quality

     and level of competence and ability.

2.  Tour operators are unmindful of the quality of guides they employ - most

     likely because these guides accept rates far below the going rate. These

     tour operators likely fall within the bracket of those who are known as the

     “under-cutters”.

3.  The regulatory authority - the Tourism Council of Bhutan - is obviously failing

     to monitor, regulate and enforce their rules that are already firmly in place.

     There is a detailed Letter of Undertaking (LoU) that each tour guide is required to

      sign before they are issued their guiding license. This LoU is explicit about

      the DO’s and DON’T’s. And yet, many guides fail to adhere to these rules.

 TCB requires every tour guide to sign the above Letter of Undertaking before they are issued their guiding license - then promptly forgets to enforce the rules.

The reverse side of a tour guide's license issued by the TCB. The prominently printed rules require that the guides must display their guiding license but not all do.

The guide is the single most important person in the service chain of the tourism industry - even more important than the tour operators themselves! The responsibility on the guide’s shoulders is immense and all encompassing. The selection of the guides should, therefore, be most crucial - because they are the first and the last person the tourists will see, from the day of their arrival to the day of their departure, including every single day in between. The guides set the all important and lingering first impressions - all other impressions are secondary and incidental.

There should be no compromise in the selection of the guides. The guides’ training and grooming must be rigorous and first rate. Their social grace must be impeccable – they must be knowledgeable on the country’s history, culture and tradition. In order that they can be sensitive to others’ cultural and religious sentiments, the guides must have a fair knowledge of most of the world’s important cultures and religions.

All these qualification requirement means that the guides are highly trained people with special skills. In other words they must be treated with respect and paid much better than some of them are believed to be. I hear that some tour companies pay them as low as Nu.700.00 per day - thereby, on occasions, forcing them to sleep in buses - because they are unable to afford lodgings with what they are paid.

We need to improve the quality of our guides. Their knowledge base must be regularly updated - their training course must include some bit of history, culture and religion of the major countries of the world. We need to ensure that the tour companies are employing knowledgeable and disciplined guides, and paying them well. They must not employ delinquent guides.

The guides are our ambassadors - they project the face and soul of Bhutan. The TCB must immediately assume responsibility over the stewardship of this segment of tourism service. The TCB must step up monitoring in order that the rules already in placed are enforced so that the guides remain vigilant about their responsibilities. TCB inspectors must make surprise inspections to tourist sites, restaurants, hotels and airports - on a regular basis to ensure that the guides are performing as they are expected to. This should not be a problem since TCB has record of what groups are in the country, and where each of them are at any given day.

If need be, we must empower the RBP, Immigration and Cultural Officials, hotel/restaurant owners and others to regulate the guides' behaviours. 

We must all realize that the guides are an important element in guiding the tourism industry’s journey to the top. The metaphor that if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys is a funny allegory, but its implications are serious. It is no laughing matter.

What it means is that whole lot of monkeys is ruinous for business.