Expectations of a group travel agencies from tourist guides and the degree of how much these expectations are met

These are revitalizing times for tour guides all over the world. Since we are undergoing the very early phase of the twenty-first century, travel and tourism evenly manage to become the one of the foremost markets in the world economy. Tour guides, the heroes of tourism, have just become a very indispensable part of the concept grouped under tourism. The industry, media, government and general public have realized the fact that a tour guide's role is much more beyond what its name suggests. In the first part of the study, a historical outlook of guidance has been examined referring to variety of resources, then in the second part a thorough examination of curricula offered in Turkish Higher Education institutions together with some of its counterparts and in the last part of the study, an empirical study conducted on travel agencies has been presented with its implications. The underlying objective of this study is to provide the industry, academicians, government and general public with the very hindsight this profession has. Through the implementation of the survey, weak and strong points of educational matters involved in the training of tourist guides have been the major concern this study has.