AMMAN — Seventy-three new tour guides have joined the list of tour
guides who work in the
Petra visitor center under the supervision of the Petra
Development and Tourism Region Authority (
PDTRA). The new guides follow the
approximately 150 guides already registered.
اضافة اعلان
In an interview with Jordan News, Suleiman Farajat, the chief
commissioner of the PDTRA, explained that in 2012, the PDTRA unified all of its
services under a single ticket for guests, simultaneously raising the price of
the ticket. At that time, they implemented a different service agreement for
its tour guides, who receive a monthly cut of that month’s ticket sales. While
tour guides can work anywhere in the country, to work in the visitors’ center
at Petra, they need to apply and be accepted by the PDTRA through this service
agreement.
“In 2019, because tourism increased, there was a demand for tour
guides,” the commissioner said. In that year, Petra recorded record-high rates
of visitors, with over a million guests visiting the archaeological site.
“Therefore many Jordanians in general, including some locals from Wadi Musa,
took the guiding course and they wanted to be included in this agreement.”
Farajat added that usually, tour guides need to have a bachelor’s degree, take
specific courses, and pass exams to get their licenses.
But then that high demand for tour guides dropped precipitously when the
pandemic began and Jordan closed its airport. Due to COVID-19, the PDTRA
decided to delay the acceptance of any new applicants.
Now, that has changed, with the 73 new additions to the roster.
“When you have a new tour guide, the older generation sees them as
competition,” Farajat said, recalling his own experiences as a tour guide 30
years ago. “So we need to manage things in a peaceful way.”
Farajat pointed out that the economic situation for Jordan’s tour guides
has been challenging. “It’s very tough for them,” he said. “Many of them have
very bad situations. But there are signals that tourism is coming back.”
With a vaccination campaign coursing across the country and consistently
low rates of COVID-19, there is hope that the Kingdom can revive its ailing
tourism industry - for the benefit of visitors and tour guides alike.
Tour guides were among the segments deeply affected by COVID, as tourism
came to a complete stop tour guides found it hard to make ends meet.
Daoud Hattar, a tour guide, told Jordan News that “our conditions as
tour guides are really bad, worse than you would imagine them to be.”
Hattar explained that “our work relies on foreign tourists, but now,
because of the pandemic and difficult travel conditions, we are suffering from
lack of tourists therefore lack of money.”
“We can say that the situation is getting better now, but not
significantly - what we have been going through was really hard and we cannot
compensate our losses easily and quickly.”
Despite the sector picking up, Hattar stresses that it is nowhere near
pre covid.
“Last year, and despite the pandemic, we used to rely on Jordanian
tourists within “Ordunna Janna” a program which is supported by the Ministry of
Tourism “, Hattar said and added that “unfortunately, the program this year is
not good as it was last year; the ministry cancelled some important trips
within the program that had a huge turnout last year.”
“We used to receive between 70 - 80 bus per day last year, this year we
might receive just 35 buses per week”, he said.
Read more national news
.jpg)
.jpg)
