World Food Travel Association Launches New Culinary Certified Tourist Guide Program

5 May 2019

Today the World Food Travel Association (WFTA) and the European Federation of Tourist Guide Associations (FEG) signed an agreement to offer the world’s first truly online, comprehensive Culinary Tourist Guide Certification training programme.

The WFTA is the world’s leading authority on food and beverage tourism.  Its World Food Travel University offers the world’s greatest variety and highest quality of food tourism education and training programmes. The Association offers certifications, speeches, workshops, a trade podcast and an industry handbook under its World Food Travel Academy portfolio.

The Culinary Tourist Guide Certification training programme is a short course designed to deliver highly specific content at the participant’s own pace. The training programme takes approximately three hours to complete and includes two online Masterclasses with knowledge comprehension exams, followed by an open question assessment. At the end of the training, those tourist guides who pass are certified that they know how to design and conduct a high-quality and professional culinary tour. Tourist guides who graduate receive a printable diploma, lapel pin and marketing support.

The programme is delivered 100% online and is custom designed to meet the needs of professional tourist guides. English subtitles make comprehension easier for those whose native language is not English.

The training programme is offered exclusively to the FEG’s association members and affiliates. A list of affiliated organisations can be found  on the FEG website.

The FEG Executive Council President, Efi Kalampoukidou said, “We are really glad to be able to collaborate with the WFTA on this first online course for FEG to offer exclusively to its members. We have all been guiding in our own areas of qualification on gastronomy tours, wine tasting, traditional food markets and taking ​our guests to cooking classes, but ​so far with no ​formal life-long training for our profession ​in this specialist field. It is a great chance for us all to be trained and assessed by the WFTA and finally become ‘Culinary-Certified Tourist Guides.’ I’m sure our colleagues across Europe will embrace this effort for continuous professional development and it’ll be a great success ​for all.  This certification will be ​of benefit not just to tourist guides, but to travellers ​as a whole – destinations, tour organisers and of course ​our domestic and overseas travellers, who will all enjoy ​enhanced guiding services ​from us. “

The WFTA’s Executive Director, Erik Wolf added, “This is an important turning point in the world’s food/culinary/gastronomy tourism industry. There has been a tremendous growth in food tours around the world. What has been lacking so far is the professionalism needed to help travelers get the most out of a destination and its culinary culture. There are a lot of reviews with 5 stars on websites like TripAdvisor simply because the guide had a great personality. Travellers need assurance before they leave home that the guide knows the local culinary culture inside and out. Many guides do, but sadly many do not, and the consumer is none the wiser. Our culinary tourist guide certification programme is designed to provide a common denominator of excellence among culinary tourist guides world-wide. Travelers can rest assured that a Culinary-Certified Tourist Guide will deliver an in-depth, high-quality culinary tour of the given destination. We’re delighted to partner with FEG in this important endeavor.”

ABOUT THE EUROPEAN FEDERATION OF TOURIST GUIDE ASSOCIATIONS (FEG)

FEG was founded in 1986 in Paris to represent the tourist guide profession at the European level, to publicise and improve the quality of service offered to all visitors to Europe, and to bring together and strengthen professional tourist guiding links across the continent. Since then, the organisation has grown to serve over 50,000 professional tourist guides all throughout Europe. FEG provides training, advocacy and a Code of Conduct to ensure the continued professionalism of tourist guiding in Europe. Learn more about FEG here.

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