Time to revisit the law on guiding

Some two months ago I wrote a column on the law on guiding, which permits only licensed tourist guides to lead "organised excursions". Two developments since then prompt me to return to the subject.

In my original article, I made two arguments. One was that the tourist guide's licence should be there only to guarantee a good minimum standard of service - and not, as it is currently conceived, to protect the livelihood of tourist guides.

One development since the publication of that column has been a stream of letters from tourist guides to this newspaper and my mailbox. With one exception, these letters indicate that my argument was misunderstood. I did not attack the professionalism of tourist guides, nor did I suggest that professional guiding did not require proper training. Yet it seems I was understood to have done just that.

Let me repeat the argument because I consider it important. A licence should be the equivalent of the seal of quality on certain wines (e.g. DOCG ) - a mark many people will appreciate and look for, but not a mark that should be used to prevent people from drinking table wine or even rough plonk.

I should add that this is my attitude to many kinds of professional licence. I would object strongly if a teacher's warrant were made a requirement for anyone involved in any kind of teaching, and not simply a requirement for teachers in certain kinds of schools. The argument stems from a broader political attitude. I do not expect everyone to accept the argument, but I do resent seeing it portrayed as an attack on the guiding profession.

However, it was the second argument I made in the original column that I consider the more important. I stated that the law as it stands sabotages the development of cultural tourism. There is a certain kind of cultural tourist who will not be served well by a regular licensed guide; such a tourist requires an expert in a particular branch of culture or cultural history. Yet the law, while guaranteeing a minimum standard of service, was preventing the delivery of the maximum standard.

What guides do - even specialist guides - is absorb expert information and convey it effectively to others. But cultural tourists are people with a specialist love. What will draw them to a festival is the possibility of engaging in a dialogue with the person leading their tour. That dialogue will very likely raise questions about the subject that would not have been part of the information that the guide was required to assimilate - and it would be unreasonable to expect a specialist guide to have a profound knowledge of (as opposed to being well-informed about) a particular subject.

The Malta Union of Tourist Guides does not seem to accept this argument. But since making it, I have learned that the MTA has before it two letters on this subject. One is from the organisers of the Baroque Festival (May 2003), who want to be permitted to have baroque specialists (but unlicensed as tourguides) to lead tours. The organisers, who know their market, argue that having such specialists would significantly add to the prestige of the event.

The second letter is from the arts council. I believe it argues that the guiding law as it stands contradicts the cultural policy. This argument surely is correct.

The cultural policy relies on cultural tourism in a very important way. It recognises that certain kinds of important cultural events for Maltese residents are not easy to make viable - unless the Maltese market is expanded by drawing tourists to Malta specifically for certain events.

So cultural tourism is important not just for the future of our tourism, but also for the development of Maltese culture. For example, we will be able to afford to get important regional events over to Malta only if Malta is established on the cultural tourist map as a cultural hub of Mediterranean events.

These events would probably need to be worked into a package that includes expert-guided tours, whose aim is not to convey information, but to stimulate cultural dialogue. The cultural tourist is not so much a site-seer or an observer as much as a participant.

The law as currently framed stands in the way of the flourishing of cultural tourism. It obstructs the aims of the cultural policy. In the short run, the problem can be circumvented if the MTA issues ad hoc permits to bona fide organisers of cultural tourism. But in the longer run, the law needs to be revisited.