DENPASAR ~

Bali Governor Made Mangku Pastika expressed support towards certification program for tourism practitioners which are being intensively conducted by Ministry of Tourism.

“The certification becomes an important part of improving the quality of human resources in tourism field in order to compete in the free trade era of ASEAN,” Pastika said during the visit of Head of Resource Development in Ministry of Tourism Prof I Gde Pitana in his office in Denpasar on Monday.

According to him, the increase in the quality of human resources is an urgent need for tourism in Bali. Therefore, there should be clear standards for practitioners engaged in the tourism sector in order to provide good service to tourists.

“Among many components of tourism practitioners, tour guide is the front liner that directly contact with tourists, so that this sector should be given more intensive supervision,” he said.

Mangku Pastika regarded that many tour guides do not know in explaining the history and culture of Bali. This is very detrimental to tourists because they often get unsatisfactory service.

“Tourists are definitely going to talk about the dissatisfaction of service and if it is not anticipated, it may damage the image of Bali,” Pastika said.

Moreover, he added, recently the information is rapidly spread through online media. To that end, Pastika hopes the certification program can improve the quality of tourism actors in order to provide better service.

Meanwhile, Head of Resource Development of Tourism Ministry Prof I Gde Pitana expressed gratitude for the support given by the Governor.

He stated that government is making tourism as one of the leading sectors. This sector will continue to be encouraged with a target of 20 million tourists by 2019.

According Pitana, free visa for 30 countries is one of the policies that is expected to support the achievement of the target. In addition, improving the quality of service in the world of tourism through certification program becomes an important part in the development of tourism.

Special in 2015, the existence of Chinese tour guide become focus of attention of this program. Because, there’re quite a lot of negative issues related to the service for Chinese tourists.

Overall, 17,600 tourism human resources will be certified this year focusing in three areas: Bali, Jakarta and Batam. Of these, the tour guides will get the most portion.

Apart from competence and mastery of culture and history, coaching of ethics also becomes variable in certification process. “It is due to many tourist guides that have good competence, but lack in ethics,” said Pitana while mentioning to the success of the program, he took Institute of Tourism (STP) Bali.