UK’s Blue Badge Tourist Guides Get Europe-wide Certification

The UK’s prestigious tourist guide qualification, the Blue Badge, was certified by the European Federation of Tourist Guide Associations (FEG) on February 1, the first day after Brexit.

Blue Badge tourist guides are registered in London with the Institute of Tourist Guiding, a professional membership organisation which is committed to developing, maintaining and promoting professional standards in tourist guiding. .

“FEG is hugely committed to high quality tourist guide training programmes offered in Europe. We would like to congratulate the Institute of Tourist Guiding on achieving FEG EN15565:2008 certification and look forward to working with them in the future,” Efi Kalampoukidou, FEG ExCo President and accredited tourist guide trainer said.

The European federation certified that the Blue Badge Training Framework for England, Northern Ireland, & Jersey tourist guides complies with the CEN Standard EN15565:2008, after detailed verification of the course content, duration, qualification of trainers and assessment methods.

“FEG is a proud CEN member and had participated into the CEN EN15565:2008 standardisation working group back in 2005-2008,” Kalampoukidou added.

FEG is a pan-European professional non-profit organisation – that among its goals – promotes and offers high quality training for tourist guides.

“We’re delighted that our Blue Badge qualification, which has always had so much respect in other European countries, has been certified by such rigorous criteria,” ITG President Marilyn Collis said.

“The Institute of Tourist Guiding has worked closely with FEG for many years, and we will of course continue to be an active member after Brexit’” she added.