Standardisation and Negotiation: How Regulation Shapes Informal Tour Guiding at Petra

This thesis observes how Jordan's tour-guide licensing system shapes both the supply of informal guiding and tourist demand for this type of service at Petra, one of the world's most outstanding historical landmarks. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with informal guides, licensed guides, and tourists, alongside a thematic content analysis of Russian-speaking traveller communities on Telegram and WhatsApp, it argues that informal guiding at Petra is best understood as a product of regulation rather than simply as a failure of enforcement. The licensing system creates substantial barriers to formal status, including the cost of a private qualifying course, a university-degree requirement, and a rule restricting licensed guiding to a full-time occupation. These barriers fall particularly heavily on local operators whose livelihoods are diversified and whose knowledge is acquired through practical and place-based experience rather than formal credentials. Simultaneously, the standardisation of the licensed service creates space for a differentiated informal alternative offering greater flexibility, local embeddedness, and responsiveness to linguistic and price-sensitive demand. In the absence of formal certification, trust is generated through reputation circulating within digital traveller communities, which form a distinct informal layer alongside credential-gated formal platforms. Enforcement is present but discretionary, characterised by routine tolerance and occasional intervention, leaving the expected cost of informal operation relatively low. The thesis concludes that regulatory burden, enforcement weakness, and regulatory gap are interconnected mechanisms, with regulatory burden as the primary driver. Its contribution is to show how licensing can shape market differentiation rather than merely deter non-compliance.