Building a Better Mountain Guide in the Balkans
The Adventure Travel Trade Association and USAID work together to train tourism professionals in Southeastern Europe
Image: Aleksandar Donev
For most, getting out into nature sits pretty high on the bucket list. Many of us, however, don’t count getting lost in the mountains as our definition of fun. That qualifies as a time to call in a rescue helicopter. What separates bucket-list adventurers from that chopper ride? Well-trained mountain guides.
The Adventure Travel Trade Association (ATTA), which connects professionals at every level of the adventure tourism industry, recently held a training in the mountains just outside of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, for exactly the folks you’ll count on to provide both professional and potentially lifesaving service. The five-day seminar—part of ATTA’s AdventureEDU education division—was a workshop with emphasis on the outdoors, leadership, travel, healthy lifestyles, teamwork, and the passion necessary to pursue a career path as a guide.
Video: Tamas Varga
The importance of this type of event cannot be underscored enough. Supported by REG, or Regional Economic Growth, a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) project, and Sarajevo-based adventure tourism operator Green Visions, the training was a big step in creating a culture in which guides value professionalism. This seemingly expected trait, is, to be frank, not a slam dunk everywhere in the world. And, more importantly to a burgeoning adventure travel region—the Western Balkans, located in Southeastern Europe— it can also make the difference of whether travelers book their next trip here or in a country more serious about wooing guests.
Simply put: the stakes are high. And the question is basic: how can a region solidify recent tourism popularity with traveler-focused quality? The answer and the goal of the training: to promote best practices in a region suddenly finding success around every corner, next to each beautiful stream, and on each mountaintop tour.
To this end, top-level trainers traveled from across the globe to coach 20 young mountain and river guides from Western Balkan countries including Bosnia & Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Albania. One instructor, from Seattle, was Dan Moore. Moore is the CEO of Pandion, a leadership-facilitation consultancy, an entrepreneur and professional adventure guide with over 15 years of experience. Jean-Claude Razel, a Frenchman living in Brazil, specializes in safety management, operation and product development, through his company Alaya. He has traveled to over 60 countries and has been a world rafting champion three times.
