Gardeshgar , Travel journal, Vol:2, Issue: 3, The third Week of March, pdf
16th WFTGA Convention in Prague-Czech Republic
Iran Won The Bid of Hosting 17th WFTGA Convention
You might wonder what WFTGA is or why they hold biannual conventions.The World Federation of Tourist Guide Associations (WFTGA) shall be a non-profit making professional organization dedicated to the promotion of high standards of training and ethics within the profession.
The Federation shall not engage in political, religious or racial activities. Its aims are a) to establish contact with Tourist Guide Associations throughout the world, to reinforce their professional ties and to promote and protect the interests of professional tourist guides; b) To represent professional Tourist Guide Associations internationally; c) To work for the improvement of the quality and reputation of the profession of Tourist Guides worldwide; d) To hold a Convention of Tourist Guide Associations at regular intervals...
Showing True colors of Iran
A team of nine tourist guides from Iran were to go to Prague to show the true colors of Iran and to tell the world who Iranians are, to earn their trust, to welcome them to come to Iran in person, and spread their peace message to the world.
Arash Nooraghei, Mohsen Hajisaied, Mahsa Mottahar, Masih Sharif, Pegah Latifi, Atefeh Dehghan, Susan Jahromi, Majid Erfanian, Hussein Dehghan Manshadi were the ambassadors of Iran in Prague.
We worked diligently with the support of a hundred of other tourist guides in Iran whom lent us hands to organize our work and get everything such as preparing the booklet and website, presentation film, a load of paper work ready for this convention so that we would be able to present our country decently...
Days of lobbying and showing Hospitality!
We all arrived from various destinations to Prague on January 22nd, some days before the convention even started to get the hang of the city, hotel and convention atmosphere. We wanted to see every single participant the moment they stepped in the convention venue, and...
A vivid Picture of Iran
There were people who wanted to help and there were others whom we had no clue what their intentions were. There were some...
They Understand how serious we are!
It is huge if we win. What shall we do? There are some who do not want us to win. We attempted a lot to win though some told us not to be upset if we do not for the first time.
After the presentation, we were busy with the second phase and that was elaborating on the booklet; the tour prices, the places of attraction, dress code in Iran for women, and more. We took part in various workshops, each in a workshop and benefit from them.
Moreover, we distributed brochures of Iran, served the participants with Iranian tea and pistachio, gave away the presentation film, ran a quiz comprising of five questions about Iran, and gave each delegate an invaluable work of enameled art from Isfahan...
Iran as a top tourist destination
When the last general assembly was being held voting for the next WFTGA ExBo (executive board) and next WFTGA host, we were behind the door holding breath our fingers crossed. And, finally we made it. Eighteen votes. Seventeen was way sufficient, but we earned eighteen votes. As one of the delegates told me, her vote was given to our hospitality. Some wanted to travel to Iran and we made it clear that Iran is a top tourist destination. Some had no clear image of Iran and we created a true image...
Written by: Hossein Dehghan
Published in: Gardeshgar Journal, Isfahan-e Ziba newspaper, March 2015
