A research to determine the activities of tourist guides in ensuring group cohesion in tours

As part of the tour experience, group members can interact with each other, establish bonds and develop group cohesion. Ensuring group cohesion in tours makes it possible to create a suitable communication environment for the guests and make them feel better, peaceful and safe emotionally, as well as completing the tour on time, quickly solving the problems that arise, increasing the success of the tour and having the tour experience at the highest level. In this direction, tourist guides have great responsibilities as the leader of the tour. The aim of this study is to determine the activities of tourist guides in ensuring group cohesion in tours. In this context, active tourist guides who has work cards were determined as the universe of the research and data were collected with semi-structured questionnaires from 63 tourist guides participating in the study. The study consists of five parts. In the first part of the study; The problem, purpose, importance, assumptions and limitations of the research are included. In the second chapter, which constitutes the relevant literature, the concepts of tourist guidance, group and group cohesion, which constitute the theoretical framework, are examined and researches related to the subject are included. In the third section under the title of Method; information about the research hypotheses, universe and sample, data collection tools and techniques, and data collection process. The findings and comments of the research are presented in the fourth section, and in the fifth section, the results obtained from the findings and suggestions for the results are given. As a result of the research, it has been revealed that tourist guides attach importance to group cohesion in tours and use various strategies and activities to ensure group cohesion in the tours they lead, and the roles of leadership, mediation, information, intermediary and cultural ambassador are important in ensuring group cohesion. Group cohesion has important effects on tourists, tourist guides and country tourism in the successful completion of a tour, group cohesion varies according to nationalities and demographic characteristics and tour and group type, factors that make group cohesion difficult are due to human characteristics, behaviours and operational deficiencies, Moreover it has been determined that group motivation is important in ensuring group cohesion and that tourist guides interact with guests and carry out activities that will ensure their satisfaction in order to ensure group motivation, and that the leadership, mediation and informative roles of tourist guides are important in managing intragroup conflicts. Keywords: Tourist Guidance, Group Concept, Group Motivation, Group Cohesion, Group Cohesion in Tours