Productivity in professional tourist guides: Scale development study

The aim of this thesis is to develop a peculiar perception scale of action based territorial tourist guidance. In this research, exploratory sequential mixed method is adopted, and the motivation is the creation of a local scale. In that regard, it is not only fulfilling the gap in national literature but also increasing the number of studies about the field of developing scales on professional tourist guides, besides, the idea of the help people who is going to study upon the productivity of professional tourist guides. While in the in the first chapter, the concept of productivity and the fact of productivity are explained, in the second chapter the literature review of the occupation of the professional tourist guidance is accomplished. In the third chapter, the method is explained, in the fourth chapter the findings are revealed and therefore the conclusion part is come to a close. As a method is semi-structured interview technique was applied in the qualitative research design. The collection and the application of qualitative data is accomplished by face-to-face meetings and when face-to-face meetings were not possible because of coronavirus global pandemic it is accomplished by synchronized meetings by using e-meeting techniques. In that regard, the snowball sampling method enables a meeting with 11 tourist guides. Data were loaded into the Nvivo 10.0 program, which is a qualitative data analysis, and coding and theming are done and in order to increase the internal reliability (consistency), the Cohen Kappa consistency parameter was calculated in the SPSS 22.0 package program by using Kappa analysis. In the quantitative research design, the draft scale consists of 30 items. Due to the continuation of the epidemic disease (Covid-19 and its mutants) in the country and all over the world, the arrangement and distribution of the questionnaire was carried out via Google Forms and 387 professional tourist guides were reached. The program of SAS 9.4 was used forstatistical analyses of the obtained data. By using the explanatory factor analysis, the structure of the scale was tried to be determined. Principal Components Analysis and Varimax Rotation methods were used to examine the factor structure of the draft scale for construct validity and as a result after obtaining 7 factors out of 30 items, it was determined that the incompatible expressions (Item 13, Item 20, Item 24, Item 29) were collected in 6 factor dimensions in the most appropriate way. Scale sub-dimensions, in connection with the theoretical model; GAB (Group-Agent-Region) compliance is named as job security, group demands, tour programs, professional cooperation and job satisfaction. As a result, in the perception of an efficient tourist guide in the qualitative research design, the participants first characterized an efficient tourist guide as customer satisfaction oriented, empathetic, knowledgeable about the tour area, having a general culture, loving his job, and knowing people. On the other hand, they expressed the lack of these features or vice versa as an inefficient tourist guide. In addition, some of the professional tourist guides focus on general knowledge and equipment of information, while others focus on customer-oriented sales. In this context, thinking of the profession as sales-oriented rather than knowledge also changes today's expectation of the profession. After obtaining that the 'professional tourist guides productivity perception scale' is valid and reliable, it has been revealed that the productivity perceptions of the tourist guides in this scale, which is carried out for the productivity perceptions of the tourist guides, are generally positive that is to say affirmative. There was no significant difference between gender and marital status in the productivity perceptions of professional tourist guides. It has been found that there is a significant difference in the productivity perceptions of professional tourist guides according to the age variable throughout the scale, and this difference emerges in the sub-dimensions of job security, group demands and tour programs. In general, while the average productivity perceptions of tourist guides in the 18-30 and 31-40 age groups are equivalent, the productivity perceptions of the tourist guides in age 51 and over groups have the lowest average value in this grouping. Professional tourist guides who have just joined the industry and business life have a more positive perception of productivity than professional tour guides who are in their last years in the industry. Of course, the difficulties brought by the profession were effective in this situation. Occupational health and safety of professional tourist guides, who work with the economic depression experiences, should be reviewed, especially in these days when the global epidemic of coronavirus (Covid-19) continues. Keywords: Professional tourist guide, productivity, scale development