New jobs coming up in tourism

Visakhapatnam: The state government is drafting a new career programme to promote authorised Tourist Liaison Officers (TLOs). In association with some specialised agencies, the government is planning to take up training programme for the youth to shape them up as TLOs.

During the three-day long CII-Partnership Summit held in the city, majority of the speakers felt that there is a huge potential to create over 35,000 thousand jobs, if infrastructure is developed at all the tourism spots across the country. Though there are a quite a number of tourist spots in the state, a majority of them have not yet been tapped so far.

Meanwhile, majority of the people across the globe are not aware about the information about tourist attractions, facilities available, nearest towns, cities, transport facilities and very particularly availability of food of their choice.

The speakers at the tourism promotional sessions in the partnership summit felt that if the government develops facilities for visitors to stay at least four to five days, Andhra Pradesh tourist attractions would receive tremendous response from across the globe.

The tourists both domestic and foreign are unaware of local information about the tourist spots and are depending mostly on the websites. However, at the ground-level there are no experienced and authorised tourist guides to help the tourists.

In other countries, where tourism is the main stay, governments have been issuing official licences to the agencies and individuals to help tourists. The speakers in the Partnership Summit also informed the government to deploy trained and authorised guides at all possible tourist attractions for seamless and hassle-free trips.

“The issue was discussed at one of the sessions in the partnership summit. The government had concluded that there is a requirement of the tourist guides. But the guides that the government has in mind are different from conventional ones.

The government is planning to promote Tourist Liaising Officers across the state. The youth must have been trained in various subjects, including languages, geographical information, history and mythological importance of the spots, travelling facilities, food culture, accommodation facilities and information about nearby the cities and towns.

Once the TLOs have been given training, the government will issue a licence to the TLOs to host the tourists. They are not just like guides, they will take care of the complete tour planning. There is a brief talk only held in the session and a detailed discussion is needed,” a senior officer of AP Tourism said.

The government is yet to decide on duration of training programme, subjects, minimum qualification, who will train them and very particularly number of TLOs to be allowed at one particular attraction and several other issues have to be addressed.

“Till now tourism sector is only focused in Visakhapatnam and surrounding areas only. At the partnership summit, there was a discussion on proposals, including temple circuit tourism, adventure tourism, sea-based tourism promotion and wildlife sanctuaries have been discussed.

We have identified at least 10 top tourist attractions in every district. By using the IT services, the TLOs can publicise the tours and packages and will help the tourists right from the receiving them till the tour ends,” the official said.

By VKL Gayatri