In the next few days, according to my sources, members of one of our more important guiding associations will be going into a strategy planning session where they’ll ask themselves where they’re supposed to be going.

And, seeing as how they were kind enough to ask – here’s my potjie’s worth:

At the beginning of this week, our friends over at Tourism Update published a letter from Danny Bryer, the director of sales, marketing and revenue for the Protea Hospitality Group, under the heading ‘Beware industry doom mongers.’

“Trading conditions have been tough and we all know why,” he wrote.

But: “The reality now is that demand is increasing; the total number of rooms sold in the past two months is up by 5% year on year and that’s extremely important because there are more rooms available since the time of the World Cup. But our rates are still approximately 3% lower.”

And: “The period ahead has the potential to be positive and rewarding. Demand is strengthening and forward bookings are looking stronger. And if the Rand stays in its current range, that should also translate into improved inbound business.”

And: “Our ability to reap this good fortune, though, is dependent on our action as an industry to assert the value of the products we offer. Failure to do so is just that. Failure.”

All of which goes nicely with the letter which appeared in today’s edition of the same publication. In ‘Back to the high road or low road for SA’s hotels’, Duncan Bramwell, MD of Revenue Performance, wrote: “Danny’s comments are true but we won’t drive ADR (Average Daily Rate) and win market share unless we are razor sharp at the coal face. We have some work to do yet!”

And how does this relate to guiding?

Well, I believe those figures (they’re a lot more convincing than anything coming out of the party political line), and this give me cause for hope. Tourism can recover, and it will, and it is recovering.

So the tourist guide needs to be ready.

But more importantly, I agree with Mr. Bramwell: our guides need to be “razor sharp at the coal face. We have some work to do yet!”

It may sound trite, and it may have been over-stated, but you cannot argue with the old truism that the guide can make or break the visitor’s experience.

But when you get together with product owners, you still hear about guides soliciting unwarranted commissions (and I saw it myself in my days on the road); when you hear about bored guides rushing their bewildered charges through sites like Robben Island or bluntly ignoring questions they’ve judged as ‘dumb’; and when you hear all the other horror stories – you have to ask what lies beneath.

The answer, I think, lies in the ethics.

Yes, I know that guides are legally required to sign a Code of Conduct and Ethics,  but I wonder how many of them forget about it as soon as they’ve signed it?

And it goes beyond that. Besides the very real need to bring ethical values into their personal behaviour, I believe that tourist guides have an enormous duty when it comes to responsible tourism – exactly because they are the people at the coal face.

If you don’t know about responsible tourism, perhaps you might begin by studying the UNWTO’s Global Code Of Ethics For Tourism (download in pdf format here)  – or, for a quicker introduction, by reading what Rough Guide has to say about the subject here.

Come to think of it, I attended the Responsible Tourism in Cities Conference at last year’s Indaba (I wrote about it here),  and I don’t remember seeing single tourist guide badge… Oh wait. Good Paul Miedema of Calabash Tours was there – but as much as I admire his company and the work it does, I can’t help thinking that many people in the industry still think of Calabash as a company on the fringe. And yet it applies all the principles of ethical tourism – and there’s plenty of research to show that a large and growing numbers of travellers want their tourism to be just that: responsible and ethical.

And therein lies the rub: tourism is moving towards a more ethical, more human paradigm – and our tour guides should be leading the way.

(For more about Calabash, search ‘Calabash’ or ‘Paul Miedema’ on this site).