You have to question the decisions of the Thai government sometimes. When there is a supposed shortage of Thai tour guides, for instance, don’t help more qualified people train to be tour guides.
Instead, lower the qualifications so more Thais can become tour guides.
According to a Bangkok Post story, the Thai government is looking at just this type of scenario — approving a change for the minimum qualifications to become a Thai tour guide.
Instead of the undergraduate university degree that is now required as a minimum, they are considering lowering the qualifications to nothing more than having passed Grade 9.
For anyone who doesn’t understand the Thai education system, that os not even a high school education — it’s someone who left school at 15 years old.
Now, I mention this as several of my Thai friends are tour guides. All of them have Bachelors degrees, a couple have Masters degrees and they have worked for years to get to where they are.
They understand Thai history in depth, can tell you anything you would ever want to know about Thai culture and Thai geography, and most are experts on Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam as well.
Not one that I spoke to today thinks this latest government plan for the Thai tourism industry is a good thing.
My closest Thai friend is a tour guide in Thailand who has worked for the same American tour company for around 18 years. He has been named twice as the company’s top tour guide, not just in Thailand, but in every country this company operates.
He speaks three languages, knows the history of Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam inside out and is a fount of knowledge about anything you would ever want to know about his country.
He is the type of tour guide Thailand should be trying to find or train, not someone who left high school at 15 years of age, and doesn’t even have the bare minimum of skills necessary. That type of decision is cheating the tourists who pay for a tour guide and end up with someone not properly experienced or qualified.
Of course, in Thailand, the easiest route is often the one that is taken by the government whenever there is a problem. Meaning, only a few years later, when the ‘easy route’ has proved to be the disaster we all knew it would be, then the government is scrambling to figure out what to do next — rather than do what they should have done in the first place.
In this case, providing incentives for Thai students to train as tour guides would be a good first step. Offering them first-class training, once they complete their undergraduate degree, would be the next.
Unfortunately, such will be the latest fix-things-quick scheme from the Thai government and, no, it will not work. They may get more Thai tour guides working for agencies, but they will also have tourists paying for the services of people who are not qualified to do the jobs they are doing.
When tourists start to complain or, god forbid, catastrophes happen, it will reflect poorly on the Thai tourism industry and on Thais in general.
Thai tour guides can see that. Why can’t Thailand’s government?