Wales has increased its foreign language Blue Badge Guides to help promote the country to a wider international market.
The Wales Official Tourist Guides Association (WOTGA) and its trading company Wales Best Guides Enterprises has announced that 19 Blue Badge Linguist Guides from across the UK have successfully passed their endorsement course, Telling the Stories of South Wales.
WOTGA had recognised that Wales did not have a sufficient number of foreign language guides to meet the needs of the international market and addressed the deficit by delivering an online endorsement course during the pandemic.
The purpose was to familiarize the non-Welsh linguist guides with a true sense of place and the personality of Wales. In effect, Wales now double the number of foreign language guides who really understand Wales and its people. The new languages include Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Romanian, Dutch and more German guides. Wales already has three French, two Italian and four German speaking Welsh guides.
Many of these linguist guides and five others have now joined a second course, Telling the stories of North Wales. It means that Blue Badge Guides in Wales will be offering even greater range of languages to include Swedish and Russian.
WOTGA is proud of the contribution it is making to the tourist experience in Wales by raising standards, knowledge and skills.
To find a guide go to walesbestguides.com/guides, which continues to be updated.
