The 11th Jeddah Travel and Tourism Exhibition, which was held from Feb. 19 to 21, hosted local and international tourism agencies that promoted their countries.

Abdulaziz Bakhsh, the chairman of the board of the Association of Tour Guides Union, told Arab News that members were “local ambassadors of their countries.”

Bakhsh, who has worked as a tour guide for 13 years, said it was “a job of a lover.”

“If you love a city very deeply, you will try to show others the details you are fondly in love with and tell them the stories that lie behind them,” he said.

Bakhsh said one of his biggest challenges is when tour group leaders are “misinformed about our history and insist on telling stories of the Kingdom or speak about locations or historical events that never existed.”

Eylaf Baqais, 27, from Mabet Alhijaz, said: “We once dealt with a tourist who kept on getting himself lost despite marking him with a vibrant colored scarf, that even his wife decided to move on with the planned schedule without him.”

Mabet Alhijaz is an agency that runs trips in the north-western region of Saudi Arabia.

Heba Fageeh, a supervisor at the agency, said that it sets out to make visitors welcome as soon as they arrive. “Our agency holds a welcoming ceremony, where we offer Saudi coffee and dessert, or give presents if it is an individual.”

Alhijaz hopes to attract more foreign couples to the country.