Department of Tourism organises language training for tour guides

BANGKOK, Dec 8 (TNA) -- Thailand's Department of Tourism is set to organise a training courses on 10 foreign languages to Thai tour guides, after finding that Thailand is lacking tour guides and most are not fluent in other languages apart from Thai. Director-general of the Bureau of Tourism Business and Guide Registration under the Tourism Department, Sutham Dejdee said that the Thai tour businesses are currently facing a shortage of tour guides, as only about 10 percent of the bachelor graduates would choose to apply for a tour guide position. He added that present guides are also lacking needed language skill, especially in Chinese. He said the number of Chinese tourist arrivals to Thailand next year is expected to reach about 10 million, and the Thai tour guide businesses are in need of over 2,000 Chinese guides. Mr Sutham said the problem has prompted the Tourism Department to organise a training on 10 foreign languages, including English, Russian, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Myanmar, Vietnamese, Malayu, and Indonesian, with 9 education institutions across the nation, with an aim to help improve the language skills to tour guides ahead of the ASEAN Community (AC) integration by the end of the year. The department has targeted that at least 90 per cent of those who had participated in the training must apply for tour guide positions, while planning to give more support to the private sector in setting up tour guide companies to provide guide to tourism businesses, where the public sector would organise training to produce quality guides and set up better job welfare to attract more people to the business. (TNA)