Roles of tourist guides in forming tourism policies

In tourism industry, Professional Tourist Guides (PTG) have significant function and responsibilities. PTG are tourism workers serving on the front line of tourism. Visitors getting PTG service spend most of their time with PTG from their arrival till departure. In that respect, PTG are not only just a translator or teller but also a cultural ambassador, a diplomat and an educator when it is necessary. A good PTG should have the power of influencing and directing the visitor. PTG can be efficient on the subject of eradicating visitor?s prejudices about the country, creating positive image, providing re-visit but aside from that, they can cause dissatisfaction about journey.Considering workers in the other departments of tourism industry, PTG are more face to face with visitors and they make contacts with different instutions. PTG need to know the visitors, their demands and regions where they work very well. Besides, having information only about their job is not enough many times, they need to update themselves constantly. They need to have information from many disciplines like geography, history, geology, policy, diplomacy and art etc. Researchs made beforehand showed that PTG in Turkey have a high education level.PTG are people who have the correct and reliable information about what visitors like and dislike. So, this trait gives them crucial responsibilities in the process of constituting tourism strategies and policies. In the light of these informations, such a sophisticated PTG community can contribute to travel agencies where they work or official instutions. Thereby the aim of this research is to determine whether PTG make contributions to constructing tourism strategies and policies or not, and if they do, in which subjects they contribute, whether Ministry of Culture and Tourism and tourism agencies ask for PTG and their opinions and experinces or not, and if they do, how much they utilize regarding their experinces.For this purpose, a questionnaire conducted to 374 PTG and carried out interviews with 15 PTG from different languages. As a result of both questionnaire and interviews, it has appeared some problems like that the collaboration between PTG, tourism agencies and Ministry of Culture and Tourism is not enough and that views taken from PTG haven?t been put into rule yet. Also, it is seen that PTG in Turkey have various problems in many subjects as a result of the research. The deficiency of law of professional tourist guidance is evaluated as the most crucial problem by PTG.