Iran Hosts the World Federation of Tourist Guides Convention 2017

Iran successfully obtained the right to host the "World Federation of Tourist Guides Convention" for the year 2017 by securing 18 votes. This convention is the most important and largest gathering of tourist guides in the world, held every two years under the auspices of the World Federation of Tourist Guides (WFTGA). Initially, 8 countries submitted their bids to host this event, but after reviewing the submitted documents, the federation rejected 4 countries and confirmed the eligibility of Iran, Singapore, Indonesia, and Denmark. The international tourist guides convention in 2015 was held from January 26 in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, with 350 guides from 41 countries participating. Representatives from these countries attended workshops related to the tourism industry and guided tours, and also selected the host for the 2017 convention and the president of the federation's board. In the voting for the next host, Iran received 18 votes against competitors like Denmark and Singapore, which secured 11 and 3 votes respectively. According to ISNA news agency, the leadership and execution of this process and success in this event were solely carried out by a large group of Iranian tourist guides without any role or support from the government or the Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization. Previously, Arash Noor-Aghaei, the president of the Iranian National Tourist Guides Association, had mentioned to Mehr News Agency about the possibility of Iran hosting: "Although there are obstacles, limitations, specific regional conditions, sanctions, and also a lack of tourism infrastructure in competition with other candidate countries, the possibility of Iran's selection remains somewhat ambiguous, but Iran's high capacity as an ancient and civilized country and its experience in hosting national conferences gives hope for hosting the 2017 convention." According to ISNA, Mr. Noor-Aghaei emphasized the importance of Iran hosting this convention for attracting tourists to the country. In this year's convention in the Czech Republic, guides from Iran, Italy, Japan, Latvia, the Netherlands, Peru, the Philippines, Russia, Egypt, Greece, the UK, Portugal, Armenia, Austria (which had voting rights instead of Spain), the USA, Australia, Cyprus, Denmark, Germany, South Africa, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, and several other countries participated in the voting. Iran's program for the guests of the 2017 convention, with the slogan "A World Without Borders," will be executed along two routes: Zanjan – Hamadan, Qom, and Shiraz – Yazd. Additionally, despite the sessions being held in Prague and the efforts of Radio Farda's reporter, it was not possible to interview the Iranian representatives present at this convention.