There's no one to ‘guide’ us: IATO
Shortage of tourist guides in Maharashtra is troubling inbound agents. IATO, which has been trying to resolve this issue, is now out of ideas.
While e-visas for foreign tourists visiting India are on track, the most basic of facilities for them are hard to find – guides. Struggling with this issue since a long time is the Indian Association of Tour Operators (IATO), which has been in discussion with various stakeholders to iron this issue out.
Himanshu Agashiwala, Chairman, Maharashtra Chapter, IATO. “We have a huge shortage of experienced guides in Maharashtra. Out of the total appointed by the Department of Tourism, only 50 per cent are active. Others are either out of state or country, or they are old. As a result, they have started asking for a huge fee, and we are unable to cope with this current demand for guides. We are currently paying four times the normal amount. We can manage if it’s a big group but it’s not feasible to pay ` 25,000-30,000 to one guide for a day for a group of five to seven tourists.”
He adds that even the cruise operators have complained to IATO that the guides have not been behaving well. “We took this matter up with MTDC, urging them to have citywise guides appointed by MTDC and have a course for guides by MTDC. They agreed to this. We sat down, prepared an entire guide course, everything was passed and was sent to the ministry, all this over the last one and half years. But now when we ask MTDC for an update, we get no reply. They don’t seem to be concerned about this,” he adds.