Tourism department and travel agencies to adopt traceable online job orders to prevent scams
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THE TOURISM Department and tour agencies will next month start a trial for on-duty tour guides to carry job orders personally that will be accessible online, which should facilitate verification and backtracking.
The aim is to ensure the convenience and safety of visiting tourists in case of emergencies, accidents, natural disasters or service complaints.
Wanasiri Morakul, deputy director-general, said yesterday that the consensus came from a meeting of the department’s Tourism Business and Guide Registration Bureau, Tourist Police and local travel agencies.
Travel agencies have reportedly expressed concerns over the cost of adopting a full-scale online job order, saying the proposed protocol would create heavy burdens on them and would only lead to deliberate negligence in the future.
Carry at all times
All guides are required to carry with them their job order at all times while rendering services for a tour group.
The order should be ready to be presented for official verification in case of problems or complaints about services.
To simplify the verification process, the department has proposed that the job order be available for online retrieval by authorities.
Then the authorities can easily locate tour groups to give notification and advice.
Travel agencies have complained that full-scale online job orders would require a lot of time to fill out, so they would need to hire staff just to carry out this new task.
However, after much deliberation, the meeting finally agreed to use the new, compact online |job order, which includes only necessary information – the registration numbers of the travel agency and tour guide, and the dates, locations and nationalities of the tour group.
The agencies must submit the order online one day before the tour date.
The online system will be developed by a committee comprising information-technology staff from travel agencies and the department.
The submission of online job orders does not relieve on-duty tour guides of the obligation to carry with them the full-scale job order.
According to the regulations on tourism businesses and tour guides, guides are required to present the full-scale job order upon request by officials at all times. They are also still subject to evaluation on standards of service, grooming, manners, social conduct and health.
