The profile of public relations profession: A Study of public relations practitioners in 4 and 5 stars hotels in Antalya

The tourism sector which has a growing trend every year is a vital source of our economy.Hotel industry with its labor-demanded structure creates jobs for unemployment citizens.Public relations as a key management function has an important role on the promotion of thecountry and the region and to have a positive image in global tourism market. Tourismindustry is extremely sensitive to internal an external conjuncture, hotel sector as a componentof tourism industry may also benefit from the positive contributions of public relationsfunction and achieve management samples by giving necessary importance to it. It is obviousthat there is a correlation between the success of public relations activities and thequalifications of practioners and the methods they use.The aim of this research is to find out ?who is the practioner in hotel industry? in the 4 and5 starS hotels of Antalya who became the tourism capital of Turkey. In this context, 163 fourand five stared hotel enterprises was in service at the winter period of 2005-2006 out of 316total enterprizes and only 75 of them has public relations deparment in the organization.According to 115 respondents within this 75 enterprises, typical public relation practioners aremostly post graduated, 25 years old, married Turkish women. As noted by Becerikli(2005,125) there is a lack of empirical research in this field in Turkey and our research aimsto respond this deficiency by finding who is the public relations practioner in hotel sector.