Page 35 - Microsoft Word - Guiding light final version 0716 1206.doc

‘The Board were never in any doubt about the course we had to sail our ship in, but the membership needed a lot of convincing and our precarious finances at that time exacerbated a difficult situation,’ said Sally.
‘Many hours extra unpaid work, trying to make our limited resources spread ever thinly, many tubs of Marks & Sparks chocolate biscuits and countless cups of cold tea characterise those first couple of years in Stirling Jail.
‘We were chronically undermanned in those early days and Doreen’s workload was immense as we grappled with technology, public liability and professional indemnity insurance, standards of performance, codes of conduct, complaints procedures, marketing and training plans all had to be written. Yes, that’s right, none of them existed prior to 1996. ‘As if that wasn’t enough there was the dreaded Memorandum and Articles of Association and the members just waiting to trip us up. Business plans and budgets stretched like elastic as we struggled to make ends meet. Doreen really deserves a Gold Medal for endurance over that time. But she battened down the hatches and kept sailing on.’
Some time later the board conferred honorary membership on Kevin Connelly for his great contribution to setting up the STGA as a company and his work as Company Secretary. The new decade also saw the first ever International Tourist Guide Day being celebrated in Scotland on February 21, 1990.
Cyprus Tourist Guides Association chair, Titina Loizides, came up with the idea at WFTGA
Convention held in Cyprus the previous year.
February 21 was chosen because that was the date of the founding of WFTGA in 1985 in
Israel.
T
he Cyprus Tourist Guides Association had run “Get to know Cyprus Day” for
several years and Loizides proposed it be extended to the rest of the world. This was
accepted and approved by WFTGA president Jane Orde. Edinburgh ran tours for OAPs, the
blind and the disabled.
Ros Newlands, who was then Edinburgh Branch chair, remembers the first event running
coach tours for the “Great and the Good” showing them what tourist guides do.
The guests included the Chair of the Scottish Tourist Board, the Lord Provost of Edinburgh
and many others.
‘The next year costumed guides ambushed a tour coach at various points. This included Robin Mitchell the founder of the Cadies Witchery Tours and an STGA BB guide putting thumbscrews on the aforementioned Lord Provost.
‘We had a group of costumed members outside the Georgian House – Isabella Lennie was Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus and her “lace cap” was actually her black knickers! Murray Hunter was Sir Walter Scott.
‘We also did walks of the Royal Mile which included finding waifs and strays in closes and being accosted by prostitutes – I think the main culprit there was Audrey Jones.
STGA members were – and still are - renowned for keeping tabs on how their money was spent.
So in 1998 Morag Bevan put together a breakdown of how the £100 membership fee paid in 1997 had been spent.
‘Of your 1997 £100 15% goes straight to your branch for local activities (marketing, meetings etc), 9% goes on trade fairs, 8% on direct advertising and 11% on producing the list of members.
‘9% is spent on insurance and legal fees (excluding the professional indemnity insurance), 25% is spend on postage, stationery and photocopying whilst 5% has been spent on board and AGM expenses.
‘For 1997 there have been one off spends of 6% on the new STGA badges and 8% on new STGA office equipment for both Kate and myself (Morag) leaving 4% spent on miscellaneous expenses.
‘The booking service is self-funding whilst my own position of administrator is paid for primarily by the two-year grant funding from the Scottish Tourist Board, Scottish Enterprise and Highlands & Islands Enterprise.’
35