Professional competencies of foreign language of professional tourist guides during education and training period

Tourism activities are rapidly increasing day by day, which result in a competition among countries of improving their tourism activities. This competition involves the development in education of tourist guides who are known as tourism ambassadors of the countries. In accordance to those, this study deals with the research about the foreign language education given in the institutions of tourist guiding education whether they are adequate enough to get license and maintain the profession. In this context, the curriculums of tourism guiding programs in Turkey has been analyzed and the information of the foreign languages, their weekly-hours and the years when they were taught are represented. Besides, in order to reveal the language competence, 384 active professional tourist guide that are registered to chamber of tourist guiding have been applied a questionnaire study. As the result of curriculum study, no criteria for opening and maintaining tourist guiding program in universities has been found in terms of given foreign languages, their weekly-hours or the years. As the result of the questionnaire study, foreign language education is determined as being generally inadequate however, the results also show that theoretically given foreign language education is more adequate than the practical foreign language education. In conclusion, the foreign language education taught in tourist guiding programs of universities is adequate to get license for professional tourist guides, however it is not adequate to maintain the profession properly. Consequently, this study offers suggestions for solving the problems in tourist guiding education.