“There is a shortage of trained guides in the tourism industry. Most of the tourist guides have no specialisation in the field and have little knowledge about the history, culture and lifestyle of the place. We have hence decided to launch special courses in tourism in Karnataka,” said Secretary for Tourism and Culture, Government of Karnataka, I M Vittalamurthy during a power-point presentation -‘Karnataka Tourism- Poised to take off,’ at Deccan Herald office on Monday.
Mr Vittalamurthy said that the government will spend Rs 11.85 crore on training, particularly students belonging to SC/ST, on guiding and providing detailed information to the tourists. For this purpose 40 students from each of the five colleges — Mahajana College, Mysore; Nijlingappa College, Bangalore; Sahyadri College at Shimoga, Karnataka College, Dharwad and Sharanabasappa College at Gulbarga have been selected for a five-year masters course in travel administration (MTA). “A grant of Rs 80 lakh has already been given to these institutes,” he added.
The curriculum would be based on the China model. “Chinese have specialised guides. Each guide has a specialisation on a particular country and is trained to deal with people coming from there. He not only knows the history of the tourist place, he is also well versed with that country’s language, culture and cuisine and hence is able to offer value-added services to the tourists. We want our guides to be trained similarly. They will be the brand ambassador of our tourism industry,” said Mr Vittalamurthy. He added that the MTA students would be taught the history, geography, climatic condition of the area and other nuances of the field.
Along with it, the tourism department will rope in some 30 trained graduates to “augment the resources for the implementation of tourism-related infrastructure projects,” said the officer. “We wanted to recruit MBA graduates but they may not be attracted to the job for salary reasons. These trained graduates will be local people, who would interact with officials for the speedy implementation of these projects,” said Mr Vittalamurthy.
