World Tourist Guide Day is celebrated every year on February 21. The World Federation of Tourist Guide Associations (WFTGA) was founded on this day in 1985 in Vienna.
World Tourist Guide Day is a professional holiday of tourist guides and specialists that work in the sphere of tourism. Guides, guide-books and maps producers, museums and travel companies staff, teachers, students and graduates from industry-specific colleges and courses, travel enthusiasts -- all those people are involved in the celebrations.

The emergence of touristic business in Russia dates back to the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries. During this period school excursions and trips appeared. The charters of educational institutions recommended camping and recreation on the landscape, visiting manufactories and other enterprises.

Until the end of the 1960s, the work of a tour guide in our country was not professional; it was a kind of amateur activity for enthusiasts. Tour guides' duties were carried out by specialists from various branches of knowledge without any interruption to their main activity (teachers, scientific employees of institutes, museums, etc.). Only a few excursion bureaus and several museums had full-time tour guides. The change of functions and aims of excursions, their transformation from the form of recreation into the form of cultural-educational activity contributed to the further formation of this profession. Tour guides came to be seen as teachers and educators entrusted to carry knowledge to people. The profession provides an opportunity to communicate with other people, to be the focus of attention of a concerned audience, and to receive regular evaluation of one's activities.

Tour guide professionalism is a special kind of skill, implying not only a high level of proficiency in professional skills, but also pedagogical, oratorical, communication skills, extensive knowledge and abilities.

A tour guide needs not only general knowledge (intellect and knowledge) but also special professional grounding (methodological techniques, reasoning capability and psychology of handling excursion, communication principles, elocutionary mastery). The ability to communicate with a group, to establish close contact with its members, and to hold the attention and interest of the visitors throughout the process is an important part of the guide's skill. A good guide is the one who can relate to the audience, not one who has a lot of information.
The profession of a tour guide is unique in its own way, the profession in which a guide personality plays a significant role in his or her credentials, sometimes more so than profound knowledge.

Our congratulations to all the guides, especially those that are working in the museum Collection.
We wish you to conduct guided tours in one breath, with a single word, with a single gesture to be of much interest to our guests. May your work always give you treat and leave a pleasant aftertaste, and may life always lead you in the right direction and open up this opened up new vistas for development.

Video excursions sequence series in the museum Video Archive introduces you to the museum exposition and the creative work of our guides, who have brilliant professional training, an encyclopedic knowledge and erudition.

We have prepared a  short video introducing our awesome guides.