Catanduanes to upgrade tourist guides’ industry skills
ECO-TOURISM. A portion of Abihao Point, one of the well-known tourist sites in Baras, Catanduanes. The Provincial Tourism Office will hold a nine-day eco-tour guide training for the site’s tour guide to improve their interpretative skills in nature guiding. (Photo: Catanduanes Tourism Promotion/Facebook)
LEGAZPI CITY – The Catanduanes Provincial Tourism Office will hold a nine-day eco-tour guide training for the Abihao Point tour guide association to improve their interpretative skills in nature guiding.
In a phone interview on Tuesday, Carmel Bonifacio Garcia, Catanduanes tourism officer, said the activity is part of the province’s tourism recovery efforts under the Alert Level 1 community quarantine status.
“This is geared towards capacitating our tourism front-liners with relevant knowledge, skills, and proper attitude to regain and improve the overall tourism experience of our tourists and guests as we move towards #ExcitingRestart and allow the local tourism industry to bounce back in the months ahead,” Garcia said.
She also said the training will introduce tour guides to various nature-based activities for them to develop a holistic knowledge of nature and guiding.
“The eco-tour guides will learn the overview of the tourism industry at national, regional, provincial, and local levels, the current trends and culture in tourism, local history, and culture, tourist safety and security, Filipino brand of service, basic life support, first aid, and common emergencies,” Garcia said.
The guides will be taught water safety, swimming assessment, land drills, survival and compass reading, basic ropemanship, ecotourism, biodiversity (flora and fauna), basic geography, forest and habitat types, birdwatching, effective customer service and values formation, tour guiding techniques and tour script presentation.
The activities for at least 30 locals from Baras town are slated from June 28 to July 2 and July 10-13.
Catanduanes is well known for its white beaches and breathtaking mountains.
Mary Joy Valdevieso
June 24, 2022 at 8:41 AM
As a Bicolano, this is a great idea and opportunity to improve the tourism industry here in Bicol. Since the Pandemic started a lot of people lost their jobs, and one of those are these tourist guides. They are widely affected because as a result of the backlash of the Pandemic tourist aren’t allowed to travel. Now that the tourist industry is slowly coming back it is nice idea to train these tourist guides of the new protocols and rules they have to acquire in result of the Pandemic. They have to make sure that they have enough knowledge they can provide to the tourist about everything they must know and at the same time securing that the tourist are safe and far from danger. This can help the economy to be more known in terms or tourist industry and give the tourist assurance that despite we’re still in a situation wherein virus is still in the surroundings their safety is the priority.