Blue Badge, Green Badge, White Badge
If, in preparing your travels you have researched online to find the best possible tour you will have, almost certainly, heard the term ‘Blue Badge guide’ referred to as the gold standard of guiding practice in the UK.
Did you know there are also Green and White Badges and what the differences between them are?
Here is a little guide to explain the differences.
All 3 are awarded by The Institute of Tourist Guides. While it takes most time to prepare for the Blue Badge examination, there are specific advantages to each.
Blue Badge guides are accredited in several counties
A Blue Badge guide will have a longer study program than a Green Badge. Their range will include a number of counties. Training is intensive and in-depth and can last for 18 months, or more. Some guides hold a number of different Blue Badges and sometimes a Green Badge guide too.
Blue Badge guides can accompany you across wide areas of the United Kingdom.
Green Badge Guides are accredited to guide in a city
Although the training is not as lengthy, typically lasting 6 months a Green Badge training will, in certain respects, be more deep, focusing as it does only on one city.
Green Badge guides have privileges in their city not available to Blue Badge guides. A Blue Badge guide may study for an additional 6 months to earn their Green Badge so that they can benefit from the benefits of the Green Badge city guides.
Examples of privileges exclusive to Green Badge guides include being able to become accredited to take tours into Christchurch and to take our own guests, guide in the Divinity School and arrange access into certain colleges.
White Badge Guides are accredited to guide in one site.
Training is typically flexible and requires a minimum of 28 hours of instruction on site for the ITG White Badge. Volunteers who give their time freely to a particular site may be given an opportunity to take this qualification as an act of gratitude and conscientiousness by the site’s manager.
A gesture of appreciation for volunteers, the white badge also guarantees the ITG’s rigorous standard.