At a conference hosted by the Flemish Regional Government, the EU-funded T-GUIDE project presented its results to over 50 tourist guides, destination managers and policy makers from 10 European countries.
Visitors with intellectual disabilities and/or learning difficulties, their families and friends encounter many difficulties when travelling. Their experience of attractions and cultural heritage can be very limited, since few tourist guides have the knowledge and skills to guide this clientele. The T-GUIDE project was conceived to address this problem by identifying the required competences and developing a supplementary training course for professional tourist guides.
At the conference, Carlos Ortega, President of FEG, the European Federation of Tourist Guide Associations, underlined the importance of the project’s results for their FEG members, stating“This training should result in more guided tours for visitors in European countries and, at the same time lead to new job opportunities for tourist guides and for the tourism industry”.
Project Officer, Antonella Correra, European Commission, Tourism Unit, emphasized: “Skills development is a major concern for European tourism and we will use this example to show how different sectors are tackling their continuing Professional Development Needs."
Behind the T-Guide training course is a group of nine organisations, supported by the European Union’s Lifelong Learning Programme, ”Leonardo Da Vinci”. Partners include the European Network for Accessible Tourism, ENAT and the Polish University Spoleczna Akademia Nauk,Lodz as, well as Spanish. Latvian, Italian and British vocational training experts and NGOs.
