MUSCAT, Oman — Though enormous efforts for sustainable tourism development in the Sultanate of Oman are in place and the government is investing heavily on improving the present infrastructure in all spheres to woo more tourists to the country, the number of tour guides is drastically low compared to the number of tourist inflow.
The number of tourists to the Sultanate has risen to 2,063,956 comprising different nationalities in 2012, against the 1,394,851 mark in 2011 showing an annual increase of 48 per cent, according to the statistics provided by the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI).
On the other hand, the number of tour guides from the local population who can take the tourists to places and explain them of the importance of places of history is just 100 till recently. Out of this 100 officially approved guides’ mark, nearly 75 per cent is scattered across the interiors which keeps just less than 25 guides in the capital area where the international gateway is located.
Salah al Araimi, a resident of Sur pursuing a tour guide job for the last nearly two decades, feels that there is a wide gap between the demand and supply. “Young Omanis are more fascinated to jobs in sectors like oil and gas, banking and like that and there is a huge gap between the demand for tour guides and the available workforce”. He said there should be academic courses focusing on how to spread the knowledge of Oman’s history, tradition and culture.
“We don’t have sufficient courses in this area. All I learned from the optional paper of ‘guiding tourists’ some time back was how to hold the microphone and to address the tourists and not to learn more about the timeless history”.
Many Omani youth are reluctant to take up this job chiefly because they are clueless about their future if they accept such jobs.
Likewise, working under odd climate and lack of information about the important places is yet another stumbling block to them.
“Majority of the students who were part of the first batch who studied this paper as part of their course at Oman Tourism College is somewhere in the banks and hardly anyone is pursuing the tour guide job”, says Sultan Said al Maskari, another tour guide with Bahwan Tourism since 9 years and an expert in handling Russian visitors, said.
Less than a year ago, the representatives from Ministry of Tourism had discussed about the importance of such courses and it is yet to be materialised, Sultan added. The Ministry of Tourism conducts competence tests for aspiring Omani youths to assess their capability as a tour guide. They will be given identity card mentioning their specialty and locale where they should focus on.
“ No test without any formal training will bring in desired results and the youth needs to be educated before they could apply for the ministry recognition”, Salah adds.
He feels that anyone who is helping a tourist to make his stay in Oman enjoyable is a tour guide.
“Everyone who offers the tourists an option to explore something new is a guide”, affirms Sultan. “The camel owner at the Empty Quarter is a guide in his own way and the diving instructor at the Oman Diving Centre too is a guide in the sense that he is offering the tourists a platform for learning something to make their stay in Oman memorable”, Sultan added.
The ministry has earlier tried the electronic tourist guiding system earlier to ease the woes of tourists about the roads and landmarks in Oman. Sultan said hardly anyone is using these electronic sources to explore their next destination.
The tourism sector of the Sultanate of Oman has been growing by leaps and bounds thanks to the constant efforts of the Ministry of Tourism and the public and private sectors in improving the basic tourism infrastructure and other amenities in the country.
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of tourism sector reached RO 719.3 million in 2012 with an increase of 18 per cent comparing to RO 609.7 million in 2011. Ratable contribution of the sector was also lofted up to 2.4 per cent in 2012 comparing to 2.2 per cent in 2011.
Taking in to consideration the present rate of expansion of tourism in the country and the enormous demand created by the massive projects in the pipeline, more youngsters should come forward to take up this job of spreading Oman’s history, tradition and culture to the outside world. And the Ministry of Tourism should initiate projects to attract more Omani youth to this sector.
WHAT TO TAKE AWAY FROM THIS ARTICLE:
- “The camel owner at the Empty Quarter is a guide in his own way and the diving instructor at the Oman Diving Centre too is a guide in the sense that he is offering the tourists a platform for learning something to make their stay in Oman memorable”, Sultan added.
- MUSCAT, Oman — Though enormous efforts for sustainable tourism development in the Sultanate of Oman are in place and the government is investing heavily on improving the present infrastructure in all spheres to woo more tourists to the country, the number of tour guides is drastically low compared to the number of tourist inflow.
- “Majority of the students who were part of the first batch who studied this paper as part of their course at Oman Tourism College is somewhere in the banks and hardly anyone is pursuing the tour guide job”, says Sultan Said al Maskari, another tour guide with Bahwan Tourism since 9 years and an expert in handling Russian visitors, said.
