A GUIDE FOR GUIDES

Tourism is becoming one of the most active areas in Azerbaijan. Therefore, professional tour guides are very important to take it to the next level. After all, their mission is to make sure that the country, as well as its landmarks, history, culture and values are properly represented. Azerbaijan is a large ethno-cultural entity in the world history, and a competent presentation of the country to the visitors is the most important part of the promotion.

While the capital of Azerbaijan, Baku, and its population are the “face” of Azerbaijan’s image, the tour guides are the tools to translate the city’s message to the visitors.

Guide or Excursionist

The words guide and excursionist are often used interchangeably, but they have semantic differences established in the course of practice. When we talk about an excursionist, we often refer to a specialist conducting guided tours in museums. While a guide is a person, who usually works for a travel agency under a contract, conducts several excursions such as sightseeing guides to selected museums and monuments, and spends considerable amount of time with a group of tourists, usually accompanying him or her throughout the tour.

In theory, the qualification of a guide and an excursionist should not vary much. Although most of the guides are better prepared and have a broader outlook. Usually, a guide is a high-level expert on some narrow issues, periods, eras or a group of monuments and exhibits. Tourist information centers actively established in big cities popular among the tourists have to monitor the performance qualified guide-interpreters and excursionists. They provide the guides with relevant documents confirming their qualification.

Needless to say, any guide must love his work. He should love the country he is representing, strive for improving his skills and learning something new, share and actively disseminate information about the country in order to sow a part of his love in the hearts of visitors. There is a saying that a guest visiting your house will take away either love or hatred, depending on the host’s mood.

From a commercial point of view, the organization of guided tours is a good business, but it should not contradict to the basic principle of guidance, which is the proper representation and the image of the country.

A Bus of Oblivion

In reality, we are far from ideal in this area are. Below is the comment of Ph.D. Elchin Aliyev, Deputy Chairman of the Union of Architects.

“Once I had a ride on one of the Baku City Tour buses with my colleagues from Estonia. I have learned many new things about our city. The recorded piece of information from the headphones was describing the new building of the Supreme Court on Yusif Safarov St. as “the second most beautiful building in Baku.” I wonder what is the basis of such a claim. Who has made this selection? There were many mistakes in the audio guide, including the names of monuments and the names of their respective owners and authors. It was describing in detail the works of sculptors Gregory and Yuri Orekhov, who designed the monument to Alexander Pushkin; Lev Rudnev when driving past the Government House; Lev Ilyin’s creativity notable at the Daghustu Park; Joseph Goslavsky for the Mayor’s Building; Barry Hughes, who built the Flame Towers; Zaha Hadid famous for the Heydar Aliyev Centre. It seems that the architecture of Baku was created entirely by foreign specialists!

Then, the audio guide confidently declares that Baku had experienced only three periods of architectural development: the Middle Ages, the first oil boom and the period after gaining the independence. It turns out that there was no development in Baku during the Soviet period (1920-1990)!”

According to Elchin Aliyev, the Union of Architects of Azerbaijan has advised respective authorities to include the following pieces of architecture into the audio-guide: the Old Intourist Hotel rebuilt by architect Alexei Shchusev, the Palace of Hand Games by Faig Yuzbashev, and the Gulustan Palace by Hafiz Amirkhanov, the Dynamo Palace by Konstantin Senchikhin and Moisey Gusman, the modern Gumush Plaza residential building by Rahim Seyfi, Nazim Valiyev and Ravil Baibekov, since the bus route passes near these buildings.

“By the way, why the audio guide is silent about our national, Togrul Ruslanoglu, who is the man behind the design of the Trump Tower? Why does not it mention Vugar Hasanov, who is the author the Supreme Court’s building? Could not they include the names of our architects Nariman Imamaliyev, Ilgar Baylarov, Alexander Garber, Kamal Musakhanov, Yevgeni Kiryashov, Abdul Huseynov, Jahangir Akhundov, Ilgar Isbatov, Famil Aghayev, Nizami Gasimzadeh in the guided tour? All of them are our native Azerbaijani architects, and we are proud of their works!” complains Mr. Aliyev.

He is also disturbed by primitive mistakes in the recording. “When we passed the Heydar Aliyev Centre designed by a world-renowned architect Zaha Hadid, her name was spelled as ‘Zaha Haddi’. Also, the style of the same Centre was attributed to postmodernism, when in fact it is not. The style of the Hajinsky House was called as nouveau bosco. The Trump Tower was spelled as Troump Tower. The observation wheel at the Boulevard was announced as ‘The Devil’s Wheel’ (in tune with Russian spelling, R+). The building of the former Girls' School designed by the architect Mustafayev was presented as Konstantin Senchikhin’s project and his name was pronounced as Schenchikhin. The most outrageous was that the origin of Baku’s name was allegedly attributed to a Turkish word tepe, meaning a hill. Alhough it seems absurd and funny, the reality is much more serious. After all, this audio guide is presenting our city to foreign guests”, emphasizes Mr. Aliyev.

The Tourist Information Centre of Baku Tourism Department under the Ministry of Culture, which organizes the bus tours, has declined to comment on the audio guide, but asked us to send a list of errors that would help to solve the problems in the near future.

A guide sounds well

Elchin Aliyev's is right when he complains about “rubbing out” the Azerbaijani architecture. However, the problem raised by the expert is more serious.

According to guide Lala Huseynova, being a guide is not an easy job. It is not enough to be a connoisseur of a number of historical and geographical facts about the city. It is important to have many other qualities such as endurance, patience, resourcefulness, sense of humor, passion for work and the city. All of these qualities certainly help to “inflame” the guests.

She notes that she is thankful to famous amateur historian Fuad Akhundov and his excursions, which aroused her interest in profession. She later organized his trips and suddenly found herself fully in the business: “Of course, I relied on the experience of Mr. Akhundov but in many ways I tried to bring in something my own.” Her life and professional experience also were helpful. “I am a sociologist. In addition, I have worked for many organizations, commercial and non-commercial, in the oil sector. This helped me to be on the wave of events and be aware of regional development or modern designs. I have also participated in research projects related to Baku. I have accumulated already some knowledge. My personal experience gives a different point of view. I rely on the fact that Baku is a multicultural, multi-ethnic city, and it always has been.”

Lala mentions that the tourists are different, but generally, they all are interested in the history of the city, Icherisheher. Many tourists traveling to Baku and the countries of the former Soviet Union from Russia and other countries are interested in current life of the country and its inhabitants. Therefore, she needs to be aware of all the events taking place in Baku today.

A guide needs to have his own chip, an interesting detail, which helps to keep the audience vivid, and becomes a hallmark of the guide.

Shortage of Professional Guides

Along with professional guides, some of them have been working for many years, since the Soviet times. There are also many self-made guides, who are not too knowledgeable about the history of the city, sometimes completely incompetent. “Azerbaijan is experiencing a surge in tourism. Recently we had an Arab delegation, and many visitors from Russia. Currently, we have a real shortage of tour guides”, says Lala.

By the way, many tourists are already knowledgeable about the history, culture, attractions of our country. Therefore, it is not handy to provide them with information taken from the web.

According to Gunel Aslanova, a representative of Press-Office of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the Institute of Tourism and Management is organizing a three-month course for guides. The successful candidates will receive certificates confirming their competence level. In reality, however, it is difficult to avoid services of non-professional guides. Ms. Aslanova says that although it is illegal to provide uncertified guide services, the bill providing responsibility for unqualified or non-certified services is still pending.

Azerbaijan's attractiveness for tourism is declared wherever possible. But now the majority of travel agents are focused on external tourism, namely organizing external tours for our nationals. Domestic tours are aimed mainly at local consumers, since brochures or flyers describing the beauty of the regions of Azerbaijan in English are rare.

We have no intention to underestimate the qualifications of many professional guides in this article. We just want to draw attention of our readers to the fact that the work of tour guides requires the strictest control. After all, on stake is Azerbaijan's culture and history, our country's image in the world and the love, which is measured by our careful attitude to homeland!