- Presence of unlicensed tourist guides undermines the industry's professionalism, local report finds
One of the major issues faced by Sri Lanka’s tourism sector – or tour guiding to be precise – is the prevalence of unlicensed tourist guides, which undermines the industry's professionalism and can lead to inconsistent service quality. Addressing this requires the stringent enforcement of licensing regulations and public awareness campaigns to highlight the benefits of hiring licensed guides.
This was noted in a recent report, titled a ‘Comprehensive Study of the Sri Lankan Tourist Guides: Focusing on Enhancing the Skills of Tour Guides’, and was based on a research project conducted by the Survey Research Lanka (SRL) organisation, in collaboration with the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA). It is the first of its kind in Sri Lanka, which presented a number of recommendations to improve the capacity and recognition of local tourist guides.
“Tourist guides are the lifeblood of our tourism industry, serving as the first point of contact for many visitors and playing a crucial role in shaping their experiences. This research provides a thorough analysis of the current state of tour guiding in Sri Lanka, highlighting both the strengths, and areas where improvements are needed,” the SLTDA said in the report, adding that the goal is to ensure that Sri Lankan tourist guides not only meet, but exceed the international standards of excellence, thereby enhancing the overall tourist experience, and promoting Sri Lanka as a premier destination.
The current estimated size of the tourist guides pool in Sri Lanka, as recorded by the SLTDA, includes 4,887 licensed tourist guides by March of this year, and as per the report, it indicates a 5%-6% growth since November, 2022. According to the survey findings, including unlicensed tourist guides, there are 32% of national tourist guides, 25% of chauffeur tourist guides (drivers licensed to provide basic tour guiding services), 4% of site tourist guides, 16% of area tourist guides, and 23% of unlicensed tourist guides in the country. Adding that the unlicensed tourist guide space is fragmented, the report said that therefore, it is fair to assume that this estimate would not cover all other informal tourist guides, including three-wheeler drivers, beach boys, among other groups.
Findings and conclusions
Discussing the characteristics of tourist guides in Sri Lanka, the report said that female representation of tourist guides is low to the level of 3%, whereas there is less than 10% female representation in the tourism sector workforce in the country. However, a few female tourist guides are known to be the best talent, the report added.
“A mixed-age group, starting from 35, makes up the majority. There is a clear skewing towards the older age among the national and chauffeur tourist guides, and a skewing towards the younger age groups among the unlicensed tourist guides. The education level of national tourist guides shows a clear difference with the rest who are at a low level, in terms of the education qualification.”
As per the report’s conclusions, freelance working arrangements seem to be the common pattern among tourist guides, with a higher freelance segment among the site, area, and unlicensed tourist guides. Tour guiding is the primary income source for the large majority who depend on it for a living; however, nearly one-fifth of national, site, and area tourist guides seem to have another primary source of income, making tour guiding the second option, the report explained. It added that similarly, a considerable segment of tourist guides (53%) consider tour guiding a passionate choice as much as it is their source of income. Many national tourist guides consider their job equal to their passion.
“The majority of national tourist guides handle groups of tourists, which is prominent compared with the others. Unlicensed guides seem to guide more solo tourists and families and couples. The hardest tourists to handle for tourist guides are from India, as per the majority. Tourist guides mostly handle German, British, French, Australian, and Russian clients. An average of seven to eight nationalities have been handled by an average tourist guide,” the report explained, further adding that accordingly, tourist guides believe that successful tourist guides should have fluency in English, with Russian, German, French, and Mandarin in order to service most tourists coming to the country.
Discussing the current level of satisfaction and dissatisfaction with their performance, the report said: “Considering the critical role of tourist guides, tour operators consider tourist guides as a highly important segment of value-creators for the industry. Hoteliers and micro-, small- and medium-scale enterprises (MSMEs) place a high importance on tourist guides for the industry and their businesses. However, it is not as overwhelming as that of tour operators. Remarkable concerns were highlighted by a few MSMEs about the conduct of tourist guides, especially being highly dependent on commissions, rather than aiming to give an experience to their clients. Nonetheless, licensed guides are respected by tourists, as observed by hoteliers and MSMEs in the field.”
However, the report said that nearly one-fifth of MSMEs mentioned that tourists do not respect tourist guides as per their experience. Still, tourists’ satisfaction with the tour guiding service is at a healthy level.
The report paid attention to the motivations and challenges faced by tourist guides in Sri Lanka, regarding which it was said that the majority of tourist guides’ motivations to choose tour guiding as their livelihood are independence, pride in representing the country, interest in travel, and the passion for sharing the culture and heritage, followed by many more, such as the attached respect and the desire to meet people.
“However, very few started tour guiding for reasons such as the thrill of being involved in outdoor activities, financial benefits, and career growth-related aspects. Nonetheless, it is critical to note how the motives changed when they started tour guiding and when they continued in the job. The vast majority’s motive to continue guiding is financial benefits, and other motives come next. Among many challenges, the most critical is the lack of support and coordination by the authorities, the threat of foreigners coming with their interpreters and leaders, digital trends, the seasonal impact due to the freelance nature of the job by many of the tourist guides, the limited facilities available, and limited accommodation when travelling with guests, the lack of training, the licensing process, and hence the identity of the tourist guides.”
Licensed tourist guides had mentioned the competition from unlicensed tourist guides as a challenge that they are facing, the report pointed out, and among these challenges, digital nomadism seems to be a larger trend that is common for all countries and has the potential to disrupt the tourist guides’ opportunities.
The way forward
The report presented a number of recommendations aimed at improving the tour-guiding sector in Sri Lanka, with a focus on managing the existing tourist guides’ skills, planning for training new skills in tourist guides, and enhancing the curriculum.
With regard to managing the existing tourist guides’ skills, the report noted that there is a large segment of tourist guides, licensed and unlicensed, identified in the study, and that the study revealed that the identified size of tourist guide segments could be an underestimated number due to the fragmented nature of informal tourist guides.
Streamlining the licence process is one recommendation, regarding which it was recommended to establish a clear, streamlined process for licensing tourist guides. After candidates have completed their prerequisite training from the Sri Lanka Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management and other recognised associations, it added, the SLTDA should consider conducting an entrance exam/test/interview before issuing a licence, especially for the national tourist guides and chauffeur tourist guides.
Recommending to license unlicensed tourist guides, the report said: “Propose to implement a mechanism to license the unlicensed tourist guides. This mechanism should prioritise licensing the unlicensed guides who are having a high level of language skills, commitment, and are passionate about their job. The testing of their past track record, reviews, and soft-skills is vital. The study showed that there are unlicensed tourist guides working under tour operators. Therefore, collaborating with small-scale tour operators in the licensing of the unlicensed would be a relevant approach.”
In addition, recommending to license compensated volunteers, the report said: “The study revealed that there are volunteers (including graduates) working as tourist guides for a small compensation paid by the Government. It is important to identify such cohorts in the country and evaluate the skills and create a path for them to work as professionally-licensed tourist guides.”
Publicising the good work of tourist guides is another recommendation: “Tourists’ satisfaction with the tour-guiding service was found to be great in this study. Conducting annual tourist satisfaction surveys of the tour-guiding service and publishing at all touch points where tourists interact will boost the publicity of the good work of tourist guides. This will help to increase the tour guiding service usage by tourists, boost the tourist guides’ motivation, and promote tour guiding as a profession to enter by youths.”
Conducting recognition programmes of star performers is another recommendation.
Another notable recommendation proposes to promote female participation in tour guiding. In this regard, the report said that Sri Lanka should develop initiatives to encourage more female participation in the tour-guiding profession, and that this could include providing scholarships, creating a supportive work environment, and promoting success stories of female tourist guides, and awarding them special tokens of appreciation periodically.
Recommending to establish a job security and insurance fund for tourist guides, the report said: “To facilitate the living expenses of tourist guides during the off-season, consider creating an off-season security fund with the contribution of the tourist guides’ income during the season and with the partnership of the relevant stakeholders who utilise and manage tourist guides. However, further consultation should be done to finalise the best controlling mechanism of this security fund. The National Tour Guide Lecturer Association (NTGLA) and the Chauffeur Tour Guide Lecturer Association (CTGLA) could lead this initiative as they have their strong membership.”
Developing tourist guides with multipurpose skills and enhancing the reachability and accessibility of tourist guides by tourists, are also among the recommended steps.
The report added: “Graduates with degrees in tourism, languages, or other related fields, who wish to train as tourist guides, can be offered exemptions from parts of the tour guide training if their subjects align with the required competencies. This would serve as an incentive for graduates to pursue careers as tourist guides. Additionally, this can be linked to on-demand training, where tour operators with a firm need for more tourist guides can sponsor the training of new candidates. This funding would provide tourism graduates with the necessary financial support and mentorship as they train to become tourist guides. With this system, graduates can commit to their training with the assurance of a guaranteed job upon completion.”
Future research
The report pointed out that research is needed to identify transferable skill-sets that tourist guides can learn and develop in order to stay occupied during the off-season. Adding that ideally, these skills should be aligned with tourism and tour guiding, the report explained that the primary goal however is to provide tourist guides with opportunities to earn an income during periods of low demand.
With regard to digital nomadism, which the report said was identified as a trend that is already significant globally and has impacted the tourist guides profession, the report highlighted that a deeper analysis should be carried out to find other case studies that demonstrate how tourist guides remain resilient to the impacts of digital nomadism.
Adding that tourists (Chinese and Russian) come with their interpreters, or Chinese and Russians living in Sri Lanka play the role of guides when their nationals come as tourists to Sri Lanka without using licensed tour-guiding services, which is identified as a threat to tourist guides in Sri Lanka, the report added: “Future research is important to understand the severity of this trend's impact on the Sri Lankan tourist guides profession and career, and to identify possible private-sector and public-sector interventions to manage the situation.”
According to the report, future research should aim to identify specialised areas where tourist guides can develop advanced skills to enhance their job related performance. Based on these findings, it added, training programmes can be designed to support the identified specialisation topics.