Towards Developing Tour Guides as Interpreters of Cultural Heritage: The Case of Cusco, Peru

364-394
Whilst an earlier study of tour guides in Peru highlighted a lack of appropriate training, the research for this chapter emphasised how the lack of quality assurance and lack of integration of key stakeholders have created operational difficulties in the region. The theoretical contexts provided by Dahles and Cohen formed an intellectual framework for the research. The researcher found from her own interviews with tour guides and from Prom Peru studies (2002 & 2003) that visitors want different types of guide that are established in other tourist sites and which might be classified as ‘official guide’ ‘mentor’ and ‘pathfinder’ and these require different emphases within training. If the pathfinder shows and the mentor tells then there is still a need for the official guide who might be the provider of meaning for visitors. Tour guides frequently expressed a desire for more feedback from their course trainers and more up to date information about the site they are guiding. Tour guides, if not trained in tourism, frequently expressed a need for communication skills training. The chapter also argued though a model of processes, for a redesign of the training of professional tour guides that harmonised the component of training for guides that would be found in archaeology studies with those that were commonly encountered in tourism studies, a fusing of subject expertise and communication ability. Within this the widely acclaimed best practice of training for conservation was integrated into the model. The use of mediation between a site’s various stakeholders to maximise the value to visitor of any give site was recommended as a policy for integrated tourism planning. The importance of the training needs of all the stakeholders in this realignment was highlighted.