Marseille Tourism: Provence Guides On The Front Line

Tourisme Marseille — **Reportage & Interview of the Guides Provence**

Guides Sud Provence were invited by the editorial staff of France 3 Provence-Alpes to talk about the situation of guide-lecturers in Marseille and its region (Report and Interview from 3’10).

The guides-lecturers suffer from the absence of cruise passengers. Of the 700 guide-lecturers in the Sud Provence region, a quarter are considering retraining.

Marseille tourism: The Provence Guides defend the profession

The Provence Guides are calling on the government to extend all social assistance to the profession until April 1, 2021, regardless of the status of the guide-lecturer (employee on short contract, self-employed, individual, liberal profession …). The Guides Sud Provence ask all public institutions to set up partial unemployment for salaried guides on short contracts.

Marseille tourism: The Provence Guides are economically relaunching the profession

The Provence Guides are aware that the responses to the current crisis cannot be solely social. Guides Sud Provence have taken their future in hand and have created an online guided tour booking platform “guides-provence.com”. This offers visits to 50 remarkable sites in our region, on a perimeter that goes from Nice to Montpellier, via Cannes, Toulon, Marseille and Aix-en-Provence. About ten reservations have already been made since the launch of the platform on July 1, 2020.

The Guides-Provence.com platform is of great interest in the profession. Following messages of encouragement from many guides-lecturers from France, several members of the Association, including Roman Bouchaud, webmaster and guide-lecturer, created tour-guides.fr, a platform designed by and for guides-lecturers. Unlike TripAdvisor and Airbnb, tour-guides.fr does not charge guides benefits.