The effect of tourist guide performance on open air museum visitors experiences

Open-air museums are important tourist experience sites where historical and cultural heritage is exhibited. The performance of tourist guides is an important factor affecting the quality of visitor experiences in these museums. Therefore, understanding guide performance in open-air museums is of great importance for both improving visitor experiences in these museums and developing this important area of the tourism sector. The purpose of this study is to determine the impact of tourist guide performance on the experiences of visitors to open-air museums. For this purpose, data were collected from 403 participants who visited an open-air museum accompanied by a tourist guide between March 2024 and May 2024 and who agreed to participate in the study. The data obtained from the research were analyzed using SPSS 25 (Statical Package for the Social Science) and Lisrel package program. As a result of the analysis, it was determined that tourist guide performance has a statistically significant and positive effect on the experiences of open-air museum visitors, and the personality and skills dimension of tourist guide performance has a statistically significant and positive effect on education, entertainment, escape and aesthetic experience. In the personal representation dimension, it was determined that tourist guide performance was effective on the education, entertainment and aesthetic dimensions, but did not have a statistically significant effect on the escape dimension. In the light of all these results, recommendations for tourism stakeholders and researchers are listed.