If left unaddressed, the shortage of foreign-language guides will become a crisis, members of the industry have warned.

Jenny Briscoe, CEO of Gold Class Guides, said there simply were not enough guides speaking foreign languages. According to Alisha Kirk, Guide Manager at Tourvest, while many guides were able to speak more than one language this was more often than not local languages. “We have a major shortage of guides who are able to speak foreign languages and then a wide variety of foreign languages at that.”

[AdZone][AdZoneGiant]

Both Kirk and Briscoe pointed out that tour groups were being turned away because of a lack of foreign-language guides. According to Briscoe, a shortage in especially German, Italian, French and Mandarin existed. “We are just not able to service the German tour groups coming into the country as we don’t have enough German-speaking guides,” she said. “The same goes for Chinese. We have a shortage of guides who can speak Mandarin.” French and Italian speaking guides were also few and far between.

Kirk added that many of the guides that were able to speak foreign languages were only proficient in these languages and not necessarily fluent.

“It is a problem because guides need to be far more than proficient – they need to be able to speak the language well,” she said. “The new age tourist wants a holiday that is an experience. We must not forget that people travel with devices and can Google almost anything they want to know. We turn their holidays into the experiences they want through language. Guides that can speak the language and deliver that experience are just not available at the moment.”

“As an industry we need to be concerned about this,” said Kirk. Briscoe agreed saying the problem was not one that could be placed at government’s door. “Industry has to address this issue. More mentoring programmes and opportunities for guides to gain practical training have to be created while industry also needs to take stock of what it needs and ensure that training institutions are aware of these needs,” she said.

Kirk said it was time to change perceptions around guiding as a career to attract not only youngsters but people with very specific language skills to the industry.

According to the National Department of Tourism efforts are under way to address the language issue. A series of language courses are being rolled out for existing tourist guides.

The department said it would, through the course of this year, arrange for foreign language training for tourist guides in selected provinces.