Should tourist guides be regulated? Maybe we're asking the wrong question.

On 18 November 2025, more than twelve thousand people showed up in eight Italian cities to sit the first national qualifying exam for the tourist guide profession. Two hundred and thirty passed the written test. 1.8 per cent.

The (then) minister Santanchè defended the result by calling it a "serious and rigorous" exam. The rejected candidates — among them many graduates with master's degrees in art history and related disciplines — described an impossible test: eighty questions covering more than five hundred cultural sites spread across twenty regions, with no bibliography and no defined depth criteria.

A few days ago — on 5 June 2026 — the second exam took place. Around eight thousand candidates sat it. 7,844 passed the written test. Ninety-four per cent.

Same exam, same law, same ministry. Syllabus cut by sixty per cent. Number of questions halved. Penalties removed. In seven months the selection went from nearly impossible to nearly automatic.

This data proves neither that the first exam was wrong nor that the second is too easy. It proves something more uncomfortable: the system measures itself, not the candidates. In short, it demonstrates that form is an excellent fig leaf for substance — and for washing one's hands of responsibility.

This situation led me to ask whether we are approaching the fundamental question in the right way — starting from the fact that perhaps we need to get clearer on what that question actually is.

The justification for licensing and the great limits of this twentieth-century approach

When a regulated profession comes into being, the justification is almost always the same: protecting the consumer. The tourist doesn't know, before the visit, whether the service will be good or poor. Public accreditation is the minimum guarantee. It sounds reasonable. The problem is that we are using a twentieth-century answer to address a 2026 market.

Thirty years ago a tourist had very little information before choosing a guide. Today they can read dozens of reviews, compare ratings, watch videos, check previous experiences and gather, in a few minutes, a volume of information that no public exam could ever guarantee.

Economic research on the subject is fairly consistent: licensing systems, when they are not tied to safety reasons — especially when very strict — reduce competition and push prices up, but do not improve consumer satisfaction. Online reviews, when the system works well, can be an effective substitute for professional licences as a quality-control tool. In other words, a licence measures quality once. The market measures it every day.

There is also a little-discussed risk when it comes to regulated professions. It is a phenomenon economists know as rent seeking: rules born to protect the public end up protecting those already in the market. It is a structural dynamic.

In the Italian case, the dynamic is even more evident. Between 2013 and 2023, Italy ran no qualifying exams whatsoever. For over a decade, becoming a licensed tourist guide by legal means was practically impossible. Those who were already qualified operated in a market protected not by quality requirements, but by a regulatory vacuum. Law 190 of 2023 — included in the PNRR (Italy's National Recovery and Resilience Plan) as a liberalisation reform — was supposed to fill that vacuum. The first round of exams produced 222 newly qualified guides across the entire country.

Why a pragmatic approach is good for Italian tourism

First: more available guides means more tourists accessing professional interpretation. Italy is one of the most visited countries in the world and — according to Banca d'Italia research — the majority of visitors concentrate in destinations with a rich cultural heritage. In this context, 222 newly qualified guides in one year is not a quality problem. It is a capacity problem. The structural shortage of certified guides — acknowledged by the ministerial call itself — does not disappear with more selective exams: it turns into unmet demand that flows towards unregulated operators. A pragmatic access system, calibrated on the actual demonstration of competence, expands the pool of people who can offer professional interpretation. Expanding it means more visitors, in more destinations and in more languages, can access something that is currently lacking.

Second: professional interpretation produces genuine understanding of the country's history and culture. Research on heritage interpretation is explicit: the key dimensions of an effective guided tour — quality and quantity of knowledge transmitted, participatory engagement, understanding of cultural context — significantly influence the visitor's future intentions: returning to the destination to visit other sites, positive word of mouth, recommendations to others, attachment to the country. In other words, a form of soft power that reaches well beyond tourism.

Third: specialised and thematic guides can help distribute visitor flows better than administrative controls. A pragmatic approach that encourages innovation — food tours, nature trails, experiences in small historic villages (borghi), family itineraries, accessible tourism — creates market incentives to cover lesser-known destinations. It is not guaranteed to work. What is certain is that a licensing system that selects on the basis of encyclopaedic knowledge of five hundred uniform sites does not create the conditions for innovation.

Fourth: reducing unlicensed practice means expanding the legal offer, not restricting it. This is the paradoxical argument, but it is the one with the most solid logic. The alternative to a licensed guide in Italy is not "no guide". It is an unlicensed guide, an audio guide, a YouTube video, or increasingly an AI assistant. Demand for heritage interpretation does not disappear when the legal supply is scarce: it shifts towards unregulated forms. An exam that filters out 98 per cent of candidates does not protect the heritage — it creates a parallel market where unmet demand turns to those operating without any oversight. The pragmatic logic runs in the opposite direction: if the goal is to guarantee minimum standards, the most effective way is to make regular access easier than irregular access.

Three European models: none is perfect

Europe has no single answer. A comparison between three neighbouring countries helps to understand that the problem is not whether to regulate, but how. Over time I have gathered information on how things work in three European countries. What I write below should be taken with a pinch of salt, since some things may have changed or the information I have picked up along the way may be incomplete.

Germany: no state licence, voluntary certification. In Germany the tourist guide profession is not regulated by the state. There is no public qualifying exam, no mandatory register. In its place, the BVGD — the national association of German guides — has developed a three-star certification system, whose top level corresponds to European standard EN 15565. Around 7,500 active guides in 234 cities and regions; cities can add their own training programmes. The main criticism comes not from consumers but from professional associations, worried about free tours on digital platforms operating outside any professional recognition system. The market works, but signals quality asymmetrically.

France: academic qualification, permanent card, restricted scope. In France the profession is regulated, but surgically. The law requires the professional guide-conférencier card only for guided visits in museums and historic monuments, within the scope of services marketed by registered travel and accommodation operators. Outside this perimeter — independent tours, gastronomic experiences, urban itineraries — no formal obligation applies. Access does not come through a public exam but through an academic pathway: a specific licence professionnelle or a master's degree with a complementary teaching unit, plus a foreign language at C1 level. The card is permanent and national. The critical point of the French model is its dependence on university provision: when courses are scarce, the supply of qualified guides contracts — not by decision of the market or the regulator, but for reasons of academic policy.

Spain. In Spain, accreditation depends on the regulations of each autonomous community. Seventeen regions, seventeen systems, seventeen different sets of requirements. A guide qualified in Catalonia cannot legally work in Madrid without obtaining a second qualification, and vice versa. The EU Services Directive of 2006 pushed towards a more open regime for guides from other member states, but the internal fragmentation remains. It is no coincidence that GuruWalk — one of the world's leading free tour platforms — was born in Valencia in 2017 as a market response to a system too complex to be scalable.

So what? The three models cover almost the entire possible spectrum: no state regulation, academic regulation with limited scope, compulsory regional multiplication. None is without criticism. Germany has a lively market but asymmetric quality. France has permanent cards but access dependent on university planning. Spain has regional standards but no internal professional mobility.

All three systems have pros and cons, although the German model strikes me as one that could work well for us. What is certain is that none of them is based on fact-cramming exams in a sector where the ability to engage with the public is just as important as the information being delivered.

There is a deeper problem, though. All three systems were designed before digital platforms changed the rules of quality signalling.

The issue we are ignoring

Within a few years — probably already now, at many sites — millions of visitors will receive explanations from advanced audio guides, augmented reality systems and AI-based assistants. All without any qualifying exam, without registration on any national list, without a card to show.

At that point the question will no longer be: "Who is allowed to work as a tourist guide?"

It will be: "How do we ensure that whoever interprets heritage — person, platform or algorithm — provides accurate information and contributes positively to the visitor experience?"

The Italian debate is still stuck on the first question, while the sector is moving rapidly towards the second.

The exam of 5 June 2026 passed ninety-four per cent of candidates. That is good news for a market that urgently needed new qualified guides. But it does not answer the more important question.

Perhaps that is where the debate should start again.