History

The NFTGA-USA was created in November 1998 in Washington, DC, when the Guild of Professional Tour Guides of Washington, DC, invited representatives of all known local guide associations and guilds from across the United States to come together to discuss the creation of a national guide organization. In early 1999, 12 guide organizations paid dues and became charter members to this new national organization.

The organization decided to call itself The National Federation of Tourist Guide Associations-USA or NFTGA-USA. The collective association membership totals nearly 2,000 tourism professionals from across the nation. These guide associations have gathered under one umbrella organization to collectively promote the visibility, importance and understanding of professional tourist guides.

Representatives from interested guide associations across the United States held additional organizational meetings July 1999 in Chicago and July 2000 in San Francisco. Much of the text seen on this website and the structure and goals of the fledgling organization were worked on at these organizational meetings.

In January 2003 the NFTGA was incorporated in the District of Columbia.

The first milestone of the NFTGA-USA was their first-ever national conference, held in San Antonio, Texas, January 13-16, 2002, at the downtown Holiday Inn Riverwalk Hotel. To read a summary of the highlights of that conference, see: San Antonio in 2002.

The second NFTGA-USA conference took place in Boston, Massachusetts in 2004. See Second NFTGA Conference: Boston in 2004