University-certified tourism guides will be in place shortly as Mangalore University has begun a four-month certificate course for preparing guides for the tourism industry.
In all, 35 candidates have enrolled for this course begun from this month. The entire course for the current year comes free for the candidates as it is sponsored by the Karnataka Tourism Department.
On completing the course, the candidate would get a certificate from the university and licence as tourist guide from the department, according to the coordinator of the course, Mustiary Begum.
A Tourism Department official said that the licence would have to be renewed once in two years by paying the prescribed fee as per the procedures.
The Department of MBA (Tourism Administration) in the university and the Tourism Department have started the course to equip participants with adequate skills to serve as tourist guides, she said.
The new certificate course is a mixture of classroom and practical learning. Of the four months, one month would be earmarked for practical training at different tourist destinations. The candidates would have to appear for an examination of 50 marks, including 10 marks for internals and 40 marks for theory. Students need not pay any fee, including for the examination.
She said that each of the 35 candidates would get a stipend of Rs. 1,000 for three months. The Tourism Department has sponsored Rs. 9 lakh for the entire course, which includes payment to the resource persons.
The training would impart knowledge and information pertaining to various aspects of the tourism industry with special reference to Karnataka in general and the coastal region of the State in particular, she said.
She said that the course includes seven papers: introduction to tourism, tourism products of Karnataka, practical guiding skills and behaviour, history and archaeology, functional English, French language, and tourism products of coastal region. Students who have passed second year pre-university and above have joined the course.
Vice-Chancellor K. Byrappa said that many tourism places in the State lacked infrastructure facilities along with qualified guides. But it is not sure whether the certificate course would be continued next year.
If the Tourism Department continued the sponsorship it would continue. Otherwise the university is yet to take a decision on continuing the course from its own funds next year.
The university has been offering a post-graduation course (MBA in Tourism Administration) for nearly a decade now. It is to meet the upmarket demand of human resource such as executives and managers in the tourism industry.
