Hyderabad to set up hospitality centre

The tourism department here said it would set up a tourism and hospitality training centre to turn out professional people to look after the needs of increasing tourists.

Tourism Secretary Chandana Khan said the centre visualised to develop human resources in tourism. About Rs6.7 million will be spent on the project this year and will be ready on July 15 at the Film Development Corporation Complex near Urdu Bhavan in Hyderabad.

Tourist guides as well as stakeholders in the tourism industry like tour operators, travel agents, tourism police, customs and immigration officials will be trained at the centre.

The tourism learning centre will be a self-financing institution and a 100-room three-star hotel will become a part of the institute, the AP Tourism Development Corporation managing director, C. Anjaneya Reddy, said.

However, tourism cannot be growing in the state as the state government claims, if the number of trained guides available is any index, a self-styled expert said. There are hardly two dozen active tourist guides across the state.

In the last six years, only 120 guides were trained and of them, 60 are on the department's panel, most of them in Hyderabad itself. There are ten active guides in Visakhapatnam, five in Vijayawada and even fewer in Tirupati, it was pointed out.

According to the former secretary of the Tourist Guides Association, Suryakant Sambrani, no serious attempts were made to create a guide base in the state. The Dharani Travel Services, a firm offering tours to other states too, said tourist guides simply lacked competence.

The firm relies on its own workers to double up as guides. "Guides must be able to manage even troops and have a knowledge of history, archaeology, etiquette and language skills," its spokesperson said. So far the lack of fixed earnings for freelancers has discouraged new entrants joining the guide business.

The Indian Association of Tour Operators' guidelines say money should be paid to them on the basis of the number of hours worked, but guides say this does not happen most of the times.

About three or four senior guides are given major assignments, mostly of a protocol nature and as a result corner all the big tips – Rs400 for a tour of Hyderabad. If out-of-town travel is involved, an allowance of Rs265 is included.