Tour guides to be honoured worldwide

In South Africa, the tourism sector has become one of country's largest contributors to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

According to data from South African Tourism, foreign arrivals have contributed more than R79 billion to South Africa's economy.

“It is a public relations event par excellence, drawing the attention of local authorities, fellow citizens and the media to the quality and value of the work of professional tourist guides,” said the World Federation of Tourist Guide Associations (WFTGA) on Wednesday.

International Tourist Guide Day originated at the 1987 summit of the WFTGA as a way of raising the profile of the guiding profession.

“Since then, tourist guides in an ever growing number of countries have been giving help to their local communities, conducting tours for disabled persons, disadvantaged persons, for children, industry partners, officials and the general public,” said WFTGA.

A tourist guide is the first person to make contact with the visitor who sets foot in any country.

The organisation said each year, awareness grows and there is an increasing contribution by both regional and national governments to date.

In South Africa the tourism sector is also expected to make up about 12% of the country's GDP by the time the 2010 FIFA World Cup comes around, said the Chief Executive Officer of SA Tourism Moeketsi Mosola, at the launch of Tourism month in 2007.

"We are expecting some 450,000 international travellers in the space of six weeks," he said, adding that South Africa was more than capable of handling the influx of soccer fans.

The figures are from the latest tourism and migration report released by Statistic South Africa for November 2007 which indicate that South Africa hosted more travellers than the United Kingdom, Germany, the United States, Netherlands, France, Australia, Sweden and Ireland.

Travellers from these eight countries constituted 67.2% of all travellers from overseas.

"Overseas travellers came mainly from Europe with 70.8% followed by North America 11.7%, Asia 9.6%, Australasia 4.2%, Central and South America 2.2% and Middle East with 1.6%," Stats SA said in its report.

Article published courtesy of BuaNews